FingerPro: an R Package for Tracking the Provenance of Sediment
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FingerPro: an R Package for Tracking the Provenance of Sediment Ivan Lizaga 1
& Borja Latorre
1
& Leticia Gaspar
1
& Ana Navas
1
Received: 5 March 2020 / Accepted: 18 August 2020/ # Springer Nature B.V. 2020
Abstract
Soil loss by erosion processes is one of the largest challenges for food production and reservoir siltation around the world. Information on sediment, nutrients and pollutants is required for designing effective control strategies. The estimation of sediment sources is difficult to get using conventional techniques, but sediment fingerprinting is a potentially valuable tool. This procedure intends to develop methods that enable to identify the apportionment of sediment sources from sediment mixtures. We developed a new tool to quantify the provenance of sediments in an agroforest catchment. For the first time, the procedure for the selection of the best combination of tracers was included in the tool package. An unmixing model algorithm is applied to the sediment samples to estimate the contribution of each possible source. The operations are compiled in an R package named FingerPro, which unmixes sediment samples after selecting the optimum set of tracers. An example from a well-studied Mediterranean catchment is included in the package to test the model. The sediment source apportionments are compared with previous results of soil redistributions where 137Cs derived rates validate the unmixing results, highlighting the potential of sediment fingerprinting for quantifying the main sediment provenance. Fingerprinting techniques will allow us to better comprehend sediment transport to water ecosystems and reservoirs and its detrimental effect on the quality of the water and aquatic habitats. The FingerPro package provides further understanding of the unmixing procedure through the use of graphical and statistical tools, offering a broader and easier application of the technique. Keywords FingerPro . Unmixing model . Sediment source fingerprinting . Source variability . R package
* Ivan Lizaga [email protected]; [email protected]
1
Experimental station of Aula Dei (EEAD-CSIC), Avenida Montañana, 1005, 50059 Zaragoza, Spain
Lizaga I. et al.
1 Introduction Reliable information on sediment loads transported by a river or stream is crucial to evaluate the severity of reservoir siltation and river pollution. However, determining sediment provenance or sediment budgets in catchments using conventional monitoring techniques is often challenging. However, in most situations, it can be provided by applying tracing techniques. Fingerprinting techniques can be used to recognise sediment sources and to determine their relative contribution, thereby allowing the identification of areas or land uses prone to erosion processes (Schuller et al. 2013). Soil erosion and subsequent sediment transport are related to the loss of nutrients and their distribution in the catchment (Lizaga et al. 2019). To assess this issue, several software and indices have been developed to quantify the effects of diffe
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