UC Santa Barbara

The variation of suspended sediment discharge with respect to changes in drainage area follows a series of scaling laws that express sediment discharge as a power function of drainage area. Four such scaling laws for sediment discharge were discovered for large rivers, with average annual runoff exceeding 10 km3. These scaling laws require that rivers be categorized in non-overlapping ranges of specific sediment yield. An analysis of the variation of sediment discharge with respect to runoff revealed four other scaling laws for sediment discharge as function of annual runoff categorized by sediment concentration. The applicability of scaling laws is highlighted. © 2011 ASCE.