Identification and implications for soil conservation of sediment sources in catchment areas

Sediments in agricultural areas represent a significant source of pollution of aquatic environments. There are many different sediment sources at the level of a rural catchment (e.g. crop fields, pastures, forests, river banks, and roads), with different magnitude of contribution and contaminant potential. The identification of the sediment origin is important to understand the sediment transport rate and the management of sediment eroded at the catchment scale. The goal of this work was to identify the main sediment sources of two rural headwater catchments in southern Brazil, representative of the regional agrarian system and physiographic characteristics. The methodology was based on a comparison between soils of different sources and the eroded sediments using natural tracers. A set of variables was found by the discriminant soil analysis to distinguish the sources. Based on the classification analysis, the relative contribution of each source to the eroded sediments in the Agudo and Arvorezinha catchments was, respectively: crop fields 68.3 and 55.5 %, roads 28.1 and 37.6 % and bank erosion 3.6 and 6.9 %. Results show that besides the major contribution coming from crop fields, erosion from roads and drainage represents a significant part of the total sediment. Such information is essential to control soil erosion and for sediment management at the catchment scale.