Variation in suspended sediment yield across the UK - A failure of the concept and interpretation of the sediment delivery ratio

摘要

The sediment delivery ratio (SDR) has been a common approach developed to understand change in sediment yield and flux through a catchment. In this study we propose that the underlying concept of the sediment delivery ratio is flawed for a number of reasons: its linear extrapolation is physically meaningless; there is no evidence of the magnitude of storage required by the SDR approach on annual to decadal timescales; and the SDR approach assumes suspended sediment transport is conservative yet it is known to undergo both loss and production in-channel.