Abstract
Abstract Introduction: Nowadays it is nebulous how much matter is
delivered by the largest rivers into the Arctic ocean and how much
sediments are eroded by bank and watershed erosion. Thus, these
investigations were made for the two biggest watersheds of the Arctic
Ocean (the Ob’ and Yenisei) and their components of the sediment budget
estimated. Methods and results: 1.The fieldwork campaign allowed us to
obtain characteristic models of the distribution of suspended and bed
sediments in the estuaries of the Yenisei and Ob’ river 2.The method for
estimating the instantaneous sediment yield is developed based on the
author’s program for extrapolating ADCP measurement data (language R),
water velocity and backscatter intensity. The average annual sediment
runoff for the Ob’ is 63.5 Mt/year, for the Yenisei – 32.5 MT/year;
3.The watershed component of sediment runoff was estimated by the RUSLE,
taking into account the trapping of sediments by reservoirs and lakes.
For the Ob’ potential watershed is 85 MT/year, and 53.6 MT/year for the
Yenisei 4.The Bank erosion was calculated based on GSWE, Arctic-DEM, and
HYDROATLAS and GRWL databases for the downstream of rivers, which was
35.0 MT/year for the Ob and 21.9 MT/year for the Yenisei. 5.The total
deposition of sediments was calculated as a difference between total
sediment yield and total erosion in catchments. For the Ob’ total
deposition was 56.5 MT/year, for the Yenisei is 43 MT/year. Discussion
and conclusion The sediments deposited in the catchment area or in the
bedforms can be eroded again by snowmelt and rainfall erosion in the
catchment area or directly due to the erosion of the banks. The products
of erosion gradually move to the end of the river, with the exception of
the part of sediment trapped by reservoirs. For instance, for the Ob’,
it is only 10% of the watershed erosion, and for the Yenisei, it is
17% of eroded soil on the catchment. According to the calculations,
bank erosion for both downstream is less than the watershed component of
sediment runoff. The fact that these components are comparable and it
gives some progress in solving the still unexplored question of the role
of the bank and watershed components in the origin of sediment runoff of
large rivers. Acknowledgments This work powered by the grant
№18-05-60219 of the Russian Foundation for Basic Research(RFBR)