Sediment budget in the Ucayali river basin, an Andean tributary of the Amazon river
Resumen:
Formation of mountain ranges results from complex coupling between lithospheric deformation, mechanisms linked to subduction and surface processes: weathering, erosion, and climate. Today, erosion of the eastern Andean cordillera and sub-Andean foothills supplies over 99% of the sediment load passing through the Amazon Basin. Denudation rates in the upper Ucayali basin are rapid, favoured by a marked seasonality in this region and extreme precipitation cells above sedimentary strata, uplifted during Neogene times by a still active sub-Andean tectonic thrust. Around 40% of those sediments are trapped in the Ucayali retro-foreland basin system. Recent advances in remote sensing for Amazonian large rivers now allow us to complete the ground hydrological data. In this work, we propose a first estimation of the erosion and sedimentation budget of the Ucayali River catchment, based on spatial and conventional HYBAM Observatory network.
Santini, W., Martinez, J.-M., Espinoza-Villar, R., Cochonneau, G., Vauchel, P., Moquet, J.-S., ... Guyot, J.-L. (2015). Sediment budget in the Ucayali river basin, an Andean tributary of the Amazon river.Proceedings of IAHS, 367,320-325. https://doi.org/10.5194/piahs-367-320-2015