Abstract
The River Rother, West Sussex, is suffering from excess sediment which is smothering the river bed gravels. This is thought to be exacerbating issues of pollution and degradation of ecosystems. This project aims to identify the severity, extent, possible causes and potential mitigation options available to reduce these pressures on the river. Data have been collected from ten sites to investigate the amount of sediment stored in the river bed gravels and cores obtained from four small reservoirs to establish rates of sedimentation and contribute to the construction of a temporal sediment budget over the last 50–100 years. Evidence suggests that tributary streams have more stored sediment per m2 upstream of their confluence with the River Rother compared to the Rother itself. Reservoir core data indicate that sediment has accumulated more rapidly in the small reservoirs surrounded by mixed agricultural land compared to one surrounded by ancient woodland. These are preliminary results and work is continuing.
Original language | English |
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Pages (from-to) | 35-39 |
Number of pages | 5 |
Journal | Proceedings of the International Association of Hydrological Sciences |
Volume | 375 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - 3 Mar 2017 |
Event | 2016 ICCE Symposium on Integrating Monitoring and Modelling for Sediment Dynamics - Okehampton, United Kingdom Duration: 11 Jul 2017 → 15 Jul 2017 |
Bibliographical note
Funding Information:Acknowledgements. We thank the South Downs National Park Authority (SDNPA) and the University of Northampton for funding the studentship associated with this project (JE) and the Arun and Rother Rivers Trust and Bruce Middleton (SDNPA) for helping secure site access and permissions to undertake this work.
Funding Information:
We thank the South Downs National Park Authority (SDNPA) and the University of Northampton for funding the studentship associated with this project (JE) and the Arun and Rother Rivers Trust and Bruce Middleton (SDNPA) for helping secure site access and permissions to undertake this work.
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