Assessment of suspended sediment discharge in the Purus River basin, Brazil

ABSTRACT

Having a river basin as the study site, it is of fundamental importance to comprehend the sediment dynamics of river systems, in order to diagnose and understand them, aiming to carry out predictions. The observance of the sediment supply carried by the river systems is related to the erosion, transport and deposition, through rainfall and dynamic land use and cover in hillside environments. The Purus River basin is part of this context, the study area of this paper and it is located in the Amazon biome. This study aims to start the first steps to understand the suspended sediment dynamics of that basin, because of its expressive environmental variations. For this purpose was considered the sediment present in the river systems as an indicator which can be understood and used in order to support soil and water conservation measures in the Purus River basin, distinguishing the natural dynamics and anthropogenic dynamics. Thus, this study has the objective of evaluating the suspended sediments discharge in the Purus River basin, in order to collaborate with action planning and watershed management, with the objective of generating knowledge about the suspended sediment dynamics of that spring.

KEYWORDS:

• Hydrossedimentology
• Brazilian Amazon region
• rating curves
• deforestation

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank the support to collect and process the rainfall and deforestation data to Ana Carolina Cardoso Silva, Hanna Sayuri de Souza Chinen and Viviane Costa Bueno, Geography students of the Federal University of Alfenas (UNIFAL-MG). We also would like to thank the reviewers to dedicate your time to improve our paper with some important suggestions.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.