A New Technique for the Automatic Monitoring of Erosion and Deposition Rates

Abstract

The rates and processes of erosion and deposition of soils and sediments are subjects of widespread and increasing concern in the Earth and environmental sciences. Process inference from field studies, however, has been hampered by a lack of information on the precise magnitude, frequency and timing of erosional and depositional activity, because no automatic monitoring technique has hitherto been available. I describe here an automatic Photo‐Electronic Erosion Pin (PEEP) system which, apparently for the first time, allows quasi‐continuous time series of erosion and deposition data to be collected. Example results from a river bank site show how the PEEP system helps to define the true temporal distribution of geomorphological change, quantify the erosional impact of individual forcing events, and discriminate between competing hypotheses of process control in erosional and depositional contexts. The system should thus allow more effective testing of erosion models of high temporal resolution and facilitate a more rigorous linking of catchment sediment output to supply dynamics.