A tool for predicting continuous daily sediment loads based on sparse measurements

Sediment load in streams and rivers is known as both a carrier and a potential source of contaminants, while sediment deposition in surface waterbodies can change stream flow, stage and morphology, and thereby has broad impacts on surface water hydrology, aquatic life, and recreation activity. For vast amounts of watersheds around the world, sparse daily measured sediment data may exist, but continuous and multi-year daily measured sediment data are largely unavailable because of time-consuming and budget constraint for measurements. A gap-filling tool is developed to predict the continuous and multi-year daily sediment loads based on sparse, limited, and discontinuous measurements using the flow-weighted method (Ouyang, 2022, https://www.fs.usda.gov/research/treesearch/66113). An example with detailed instructions associated with data and R script on how to implement the tool is available.