Investigation of land-use change and hydrologic forcing upon streambank erosion and in-stream sediment processes using a watershed model and sediment tracers

In stream erosion represents a significant portion of the watershed sediment budget for lowland watersheds, but current modeling strategies do not often include accurate methods for estimating the yield from stream bank sources or accurate representation of the stream bank erosion process at the watershed scale. This research presents a method for estimating the yield from stream bank sources using sediment carbon and nitrogen isotopic tracer results coupled with a watershed scale erosion and sediment transport model. The coupled fingerprinting-watershed modeling framework is presented in the following steps: 1) measure the sediment yield from the study watershed; 2) estimate fraction of sediment yield eroding from stream banks using sediment fingerprinting data and use this and other collected data for the watershed model calibration and verification; 3) create a conceptually simple, yet representative, model of bank erosion processes and integrate the subroutine into the watershed erosion and sediment transport model, calibrate, and verify. Land use and climate change sceneries will then be used with the calibrated model to predict the effect on the sediment transport budget.