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- Title
The Contributions of the Largest Erosive Events to Sediment Yields in Karst Catchments.
- Authors
Li, Zhenwei; Xu, Xianli; Zhu, Jingxuan; Xu, Chaohao; Wang, Kelin
- Abstract
A large proportion of the soil loss is generally produced by a small number of large erosive events; these events are primarily responsible for the time compression of geomorphic processes. This issue, however, has received little attention in subtropical humid karst areas where extreme rainfall events frequently occur and soil erosion is relatively severe. The objective of this study was to examine the contributions of the largest daily erosive events to the annual sediment yield and to investigate whether these contributions depend on flow variability, catchment size, and karst coverage in 40 selected karst catchments. The time series data of the largest daily erosive events at each catchment were ranked by magnitude, and the percentage of the sediment yield produced by the n‐largest erosive events was calculated. The results indicated that a few large erosive events governed the annual sediment yield. Specifically, the 5‐largest erosive events produced, on average, 56% of the annual sediment yield, while the 10‐ and 25‐largest erosive events contributed 69% and 83% of the annual sediment yield, respectively. A catchment with a high flow variability generally had a great percentage of the sediment yield produced by largest events. The sediment produced by n‐largest erosive events (%) significantly decreased by catchment size as a power function and thus were scale dependent, while the karst coverage had no significant effect on these contributions. This study is helpful to effectively controlling sediment delivery and provides a more in‐depth understanding of the soil erosion processes in subtropical humid karst regions. Key Points: Annual sediment yields were controlled by few erosive eventsThe largest daily precipitation events did not coincide with the largest sediment loadThe contributions of the n‐largest events to annual sediment yield were scale dependent
- Subjects
KARST; SOIL erosion; SEDIMENT control; TIME series analysis; SEDIMENTS; WATERSHEDS
- Publication
Water Resources Research, 2020, Vol 56, Issue 7, p1
- ISSN
0043-1397
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.1029/2019WR025839