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Core-derived historical records of suspended sediment origin in a mesoscale mountainous catchment: the River Bléone, French Alps

  • SEDIMENTS, SEC 3 • HILLSLOPE AND RIVER BASIN SEDIMENT DYNAMICS • RESEARCH ARTICLE
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Abstract

Purpose

Quantifying suspended sediment fluxes and dynamics across mountains, and identifying the origin of sediment in severely eroded areas, are of primary importance for the management of water resources. This contribution aims to generalise previous results from suspended sediment fingerprinting obtained during 2007–2009 in a mesoscale Alpine catchment (the Bléone River; 905 km2) in France, and to assess variability in sediment sources throughout the second half of the twentieth century.

Materials and methods

Sediment fingerprinting, based on elemental geochemistry and radionuclide measurements, was conducted on a sediment core collected in an alluvial floodplain at the basin outlet. This technique was combined with hydro-sedimentary time-series to reconstruct the origin of suspended sediment deposited at this location over the last 50 years.

Results and discussion

Interpretation of sedimentation based on historical hydrological databases corroborates core dating obtained with 137Cs and 210Pbxs activity measurements. Black marls and (marly) limestone sources provided the main fraction of sediment throughout the sequence (40 and 22 %, respectively). However, we also found evidence for the occurrence of major floods carrying large quantities of sediment originating from Quaternary deposits and conglomerates (25 and 16 %, respectively). The variability of sediment sources throughout the sequence may reflect the spatial variability of rainfall within the catchment, which in turn reflects its origin. However, the relatively homogeneous sediment composition throughout the sequence confirms that core-derived information is representative of widespread flood events.

Conclusions

These results are consistent with those obtained in previous studies. They also outline the need to take into account the entire grain size range of fine sediment in order to provide an overall picture of sediment sources and transfers within highly erosive catchments. This study also emphasizes the importance of using archival data to validate the results of sediment fingerprinting studies conducted during short contemporary monitoring programmes, and to extend fingerprinting of sediment sources over longer time-scales which include large and widespread floods.

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Acknowledgements

This work was part of the STREAMS (Sediment TRansport and Erosion Across Mountains) project, funded by the French National Research Agency (ANR-Blanc programme, BLAN06-1 139157). The authors would like to thank Grégory Bièvre and Thierry Winiarski respectively from the LGIT (UJF) and the LSE (ENTPE); the Eaux Claires Hospital of Grenoble, Fréderic Malinur, Lucas Muller, Sébastien Klotz, Manu Olivier for their help during the installation of the monitoring stations, the field survey and analysis; the DREAL for the data on the River Bès at Pérouré; Dominique Cordeuil and Ainhoa Mate-Marin for their help during the data analysis. Louise Bordier and Juliette Montaigu are gratefully acknowledged for their help for sample preparation and geochemical analyses. LSCE contribution No. 4817.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. LTHE—IRD, Université Grenoble 1, G-INP/CNRS, BP 53, 38041, Grenoble Cedex 9, France

    Oldrich Navratil, Michel Esteves, Cédric Legout, Nicolas Gratiot & Julien Nemery

  2. Irstea, UR ETGR, Erosion Torrentielle Neige et Avalanches, 38402, St-Martin-d’Hères, France

    Oldrich Navratil & Nicolle Mathys

  3. Laboratoire des Sciences du Climat et de l’Environnement (LSCE/IPSL), Unité Mixte de Recherche 8212 (CEA, CNRS, UVSQ), 91198, Gif-sur-Yvette Cedex, France

    Olivier Evrard, Sophie Ayrault, Irène Lefèvre, Jean-Louis Reyss & Philippe Bonté

  4. EDF-DTG, Electricité de France, Grenoble Cedex 9, France

    Alain Poirel

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  1. Oldrich Navratil
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  2. Olivier Evrard
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Correspondence to Oldrich Navratil or Olivier Evrard.

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Navratil, O., Evrard, O., Esteves, M. et al. Core-derived historical records of suspended sediment origin in a mesoscale mountainous catchment: the River Bléone, French Alps. J Soils Sediments 12, 1463–1478 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11368-012-0565-2

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11368-012-0565-2

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