Fluvial clastic sediment yield in Canada: scaled analysis

Abstract

This report presents a set of maps of regional fluvial sediment yield in Canada, based mainly on the Water Survey of Canada archive of riverine suspended sediment observations. Regional scaling relations for the variation of suspended sediment load with drainage basin area are established to permit data to be adjusted to common areal bases for portrayal of regional variations. For most regions, the specific sediment yield increases downstream, indicating regional degradation of river valleys. In the southern prairies, however, regional aggradation is occurring, and in southern Ontario similar quantities of fluvial sediment are apparently being yielded, on average, over all scales in the landscape. A smoothed regional portrayal of the results is obtained by kriging, which also yields error estimates for locally predicted values of sediment yield. Maps are presented for the standard areas of 1 km2, 102 km2 (10 km × 10 km), and 104 km2 (102 km × 102 km).