ABSTRACT
In this study, a sediment budget analysis is applied on suspended load in the German river Rhine from Basel to Lobith between 1991 and 2010 . For the calculation, a substantial database with sediment transport datasets, echo-soundings, amounts of supplied and dredged sediments and grain size distributions of bed sediments and transported sediments along the river Rhine are used. There is still a lack of data on the amount of floodplain sedimentation, nevertheless the budget is plausible and in the correct order of magnitude. Main sources for suspended load are tributaries (1.3 Mt/a) and input from upstream https://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML"> ( 0.86 M t / a ) https://s3-euw1-ap-pe-df-pch-content-public-p.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/9780429069246/b59e18fc-9e1d-4389-b000-a1069c1cd27e/content/eq6803.tif" xmlns:xlink="https://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"/> . Small sediment sources are sand erosion due to bed degradation https://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML"> ( 0.038 M t / a ) https://s3-euw1-ap-pe-df-pch-content-public-p.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/9780429069246/b59e18fc-9e1d-4389-b000-a1069c1cd27e/content/eq6804.tif" xmlns:xlink="https://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"/> and artificial supply of fine sediments https://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML"> ( 0.1 M t / a ) https://s3-euw1-ap-pe-df-pch-content-public-p.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/9780429069246/b59e18fc-9e1d-4389-b000-a1069c1cd27e/content/eq6805.tif" xmlns:xlink="https://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"/> . Suspended load significantly increases in downstream direction. The major sediment sink is the output to the downstream area ( https://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML"> 2.4 M t / a ) https://s3-euw1-ap-pe-df-pch-content-public-p.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/9780429069246/b59e18fc-9e1d-4389-b000-a1069c1cd27e/content/eq6806.tif" xmlns:xlink="https://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"/> and the sedimentation on floodplains. A minor sediment sink is dredging https://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML"> ( 0.28 M t / a ) https://s3-euw1-ap-pe-df-pch-content-public-p.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/9780429069246/b59e18fc-9e1d-4389-b000-a1069c1cd27e/content/eq6807.tif" xmlns:xlink="https://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"/> .
