Riverine sediment

LINK: 2015ACME_MOSART_sediment.pdf

Abstract

Soil erosion and sediment transportation through large river systems have critical impacts on riverine biogeochemistry and terrestrial discharges of sediment, C, N and P into the ocean. For the first time, this study introduces a physically based sediment erosion and transport model based on the Model for Scale Adaptive River Transport (MOSART), hence denoted as MOSART-sediment.  MOSART-sediment represents the erosion process of fine soil particles via surface runoff routing across hillslopes, and channel sediment transportation, suspension, deposition and bank erosion processes through the tributaries and main channel network. MOSART-sediment has been coupled with CLM4 at this stage and applied globally at a half- degree resolution. Preliminary results from this global application of MOSART-sediment will be presented. Future directions to be discussed include improvement of MOSART-sediment parameterization and further extension to represent lateral leaching of particulate C and N from the soil organic pool in CLM soil layers into the rivers.