Quantification of suspended load, sinks and sources for a sediment budget of the German river Rhine

In this study, a sediment budget analysis is applied on suspended load in the German river Rhine from Basel to Lobith between 1991 and 2010. For the calculation, a substantial database with sediment transport datasets, echo-soundings, amounts of supplied and dredged sediments and grain size distributions of bed sediments and transported sediments along the river Rhine are used. There is still a lack of data on the amount of floodplain sedimentation, nevertheless the budget is plausible and in the correct order of magnitude. Main sources for suspended load are tributaries (1.3 Mt/a) and input from upstream (0.86 Mt/a). Small sediment sources are sand erosion due to bed degradation (0.038 Mt/a) and artificial supply of fine sediments (0.1 Mt/a). Suspended load significantly increases in downstream direction. The major sediment sink is the output to the downstream area (2.4 Mt/a) and the sedimentation on floodplains. A minor sediment sink is dredging (0.28 Mt/a).