suspendedsedimenthaslongbeenrecognizedasanimportant（suspendedsedimenthaslongbeenrecognizedasanimportant）.docVIP

A Spatially Referenced Regression Model (SPARROW) for Suspended Sediment in Streams of the Conterminous U.S. Gregory E. Schwarz, Richard A. Smith, Richard B. Alexander, and John R. Gray, U.S. Geological Survey, Reston, Virginia Mailing address: U.S. Geological Survey, 413 National Center, 12201 Sunrise Valley Dr., Reston, VA 20192, Phone (703) 648-5718, Fax (703) 648-5295, Email gschwarz@. INTRODUCTION Suspended sediment has long been recognized as an important contaminant affecting water resources. Besides its direct role in determining water clarity, bridge scour and reservoir storage, sediment serves as a vehicle for the transport of many binding contaminants, including nutrients, trace metals, semi-volatile organic compounds, and numerous pesticides (U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, 2000a). Recent efforts to address water-quality concerns through the Total Maximum Daily Load (TMDL) process have identified sediment as the single most prevalent cause of impairment in the Nation’s streams and rivers (U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, 2000b). Moreover, sediment has been identified as a medium for the transport and sequestration of organic carbon, playing a potentially important role in understanding sources and sinks in the global carbon budget (Stallard, 1998). A comprehensive understanding of sediment fate and transport is considered essential to the design and implementation of effective plans for sediment management (Osterkamp and others, 1998, U.S. General Accounting Office, 1990). An extensive literature addressing the problem of quantifying sediment transport has produced a number of methods for estimating its flux (see Cohn, 1995, and Robertson and Roerish, 1999, for useful surveys). The accuracy of these methods is compromised by uncertainty in the concentration measurements and by the highly episodic nature of sediment movement, particularly when the methods are applied to smaller basins. However, for annual or decadal flux estimates, t