Impacts of recent climate and land use dynamics on spatial and temporal changes of sediment budget and reservoir siltation in small agricultural catchments of the European Russia

摘要

It is generally accepted that both climatic fluctuations and changes of land use patterns can exert substantial influence on spatial and temporal characteristics of sediment redistribution in a fluvial system. However, in most cases it is extremely difficult to distinguish natural signals from anthropogenic impacts as well as to obtain reliable quantitative characteristics. In this study an attempt has been made to evaluate such contributions by reconstructing temporal and spatial variability of fluvial sediment budgets for small river basins with small reservoirs at their outlets and different land use histories. As important and efficient sediment interceptors, small reservoirs in agricultural areas are used as sources of valuable information on catchment scale erosion and sediment delivery (Verstraeten & Poesen 2001). In addition, reservoirs are also important as sinks of sediment-associated pollutants (Golosov et al. 2012) and organic carbon (Cole et al. 2007).