ABSTRACT
Alluvial deposits of sand and gravel are an important exploitable resource of building aggregate in eastern Australia. This chapter presents the results of an experimental field study conducted in a small upland gravel-bed stream located in the Adelaide Hills region of South Australia. Traps designed to simulate the natural framework gravels of the river-bed were installed at two riffles between January 1989 and February 1990. While something is known of the mechanisms that control the deposition of coarse framework gravels very little is known of matrix deposition in gravel-bed rivers. Rates of ingress into an array of different gravel mixtures were monitored continuously over a 12 month period under varying flow and sediment transport conditions. Sediment exhaustion contributes to lower sediment concentrations on the falling limb of the hydrograph in comparison to the rising limb, thus limiting the potential supply of matrix to be ingressed into a gravel-bed substratum.
