Investigating of seasonal change effects on suspended sediment yield using geochemical tracers

  The objective of this study is to investigate the effect of seasonal changes on erosion and sediment yield in land-use types in Taleghani catchment, using the fingerprinting technique. In view of this, 39 soil samples including 17, 12, and 10 samples were collected from different sources: agriculture, rangeland, and forest, respectively. 7 samples also were collected from suspended sediments in two different seasons (3 samples in autumn and 4 samples in spring) from 2012 until 2013. After preparing the samples, 11 tracers including C, N, P, Na, K, Cu, Zn, Mg, Mn, Fe and Ca were measured as the primary tracers in sediment sources and sediment samples. Based on Kruskal-Wallis test and discriminant function analysis, four tracers including Mg, C, Zn and Ca were selected as the optimum set of tracers that can discriminate 3 sediment sources. Then sediment source samples were compared with suspended sediment samples. The results showed that the contribution of sediment sources is 67.9%, 32.1%, and 0 percent for agriculture, rangeland and forest, respectively in autumn season and the contribution of sediment sources is 44.3%, 44.3% and 11.4% for agriculture, rangeland, and forest, respectively in spring season. These results indicate the role of human activity on the erosion rate and land-use types as a very important factor in accelerating the erosion and sedimentation process in Iranian basins.