How do a river's slope and volume of flow affect the river's sediment load?
1 Answer
The higher the slope and higher the flow, the higher the sediment load can be.
Explanation:
Let's work through this together as we imagine standing next to a variety of rivers. But before doing that, let's first define Sediment Load as the amount of sediment a river is transporting - or another way of saying it is if we assume for the purposes of visualization that sediment makes a river look muddy - how muddy does a river look given different slopes of the river and different volumes of flow. (To clarify - sediment comes in all sorts of colours and sizes and so a clear river can still have a high sediment content).
Sediment gets picked up from the bottom and banks of a river, moved along with the flow of the river, and finally drops to rest on the bottom of the river (further along) or even into oceans and lakes (where the river terminates).
The more energetic the river, the more sediment it will pick up and the further the sediment will travel. One way a river can be more energetic is with a greater slope - if we imagine rapids (big slope) and then imagine a slow moving river (low slope), we can see that the rapids can pick up more sediment and move it farther.
How much sediment can be carried is determined by volume of flow. If there is a lot of water (big volume flow), it can carry a lot more sediment than a shallow river (low volume flow).
So the most sediment can be carried by a high slope, high volume of flow river. And the least is one that has a small slope and small volume of flow.
