PROGRESS IN GEOGRAPHY ›› 2008, Vol. 27 ›› Issue (6): 63-69.doi: 10.11820/dlkxjz.2008.06.009

• Original Articles • Previous Articles     Next Articles

A Review of the Relationship Between Specific Sediment Yield and Drainage Area

FANG Haiyan1, CAI Qiangguo1, LI Qiu Yan2   

  1. 1. Institute of Geographic Sciences and Natural Resources Research, CAS, Beijing 100101, China;
    2. Yantai Institute of Coastal Zone Research for Sustainable Development, CAS,Yantai 264003, China
  • Received:2008-08-01 Revised:2008-10-01 Online:2008-11-25 Published:2008-11-25

Abstract:

Drainage area (A) is a lumped variable as all the environmental variables are involved within it, and specific sediment yield (Ys) is an index of soil erosion intensity of some drainage basin. Since the 1950s, study on the relationships between drainage area and specific sediment yield has attracted attention at home and abroad, and more and more work about Ys -A relationships has been conducted in recent years. Under this condition, the achievements of Ys-A relationships were summarized and analyzed in this paper, and then 5 types of Ys-A relationships were identified,including the direct, the reverse, the firstly increased and then decreased, the firstly decreased and then increased, and no specific relations, followed by reasonable explanations of the 5 -typed relationships. The essential reason for the specific sediment yield changes with drainage area was pointed out that it is just the response to functions of the environmental variables in river basins, and there is no essential relationship between specific sediment yield and drainage area. It could be extended that all the possibilities could occur with the increase of the drainage area for the specific sediment yield if variables influencing soil erosion and sediment transport were changed for a certain river basin.

Key words: drainage area, specific sediment yield, type