Changes in Sediment Storage in the Coon Creek Basin, Driftless Area, Wisconsin, 1853 to 1975

Abstract

For any time period, total basin sediment yield can be used to make reliable estimates of upland erosion rates only when no significant change in sediment storage is in progress. In the case of Coon Creek, almost 50 percent of human-induced sediment has historically gone into floodplain storage and less than 7 percent has left the basin. However, some of the stored sediment is becoming mobile, and the present yield per unit area may actually be increasing downstream with the augmentation coming from the storage loss.