Pebble Count Dataset, Canning River, Alaska, 2022 - 2024

The Canning River, Alaska (AK) runs from the Brooks Range to the Beaufort Sea, transporting gravel-sized sediment along its bed. Unlike rivers in temperate regions, the Canning is subject to periglacial processes, such as thermal erosion of river banks and the annual growth and break up of river ice. Due to a lack of field data, it is unclear when, and how much of, this gravel moves down the river. We measured the grain size distributions of fluvial gravel to characterize thresholds for sediment transport. This data can be used to model sediment transport, identify spatial patterns in thresholds, and compare grain size distributions to other rivers.
We performed 19 pebble counts to characterize the grain size distributions of fluvial gravel deposits in the Canning River, AK. Pebble counts consisted of manually measuring the b-axis diameter of approximately 100 clasts per count, and recording these values, and computing statistics, including D50, D90, and percent sand. We carried out these pebble counts during field surveys completed in the summers of 2022, 2023, and 2024. We focused on 8 survey sites in the Caning River, from its tributaries in the Brooks Range and Sadlerochit foothills to its delta on coastal plain.