Abstract
The fine sediment (<2 mm) effects on percentage of openwork gravel and hydraulic conductivity were studied at 5 small catchments in southwestern Hokkaido, Japan in 1999. We also examined the influence of land use on substrate and hydraulic conductivity. Bed material was sampled using the frozen core technique and hydraulic conductivity was measured using the packer test. The percentage of openwork gravel and hydraulic conductivity decreased with an increase in proportion of fine sediment. Especially the weight percentage of 0.125 to 1.0 mm showed the most negative correlations with these parameters, which indicates that fine sediment filling the interstitial space of gravel bed is responsible to the decreases in these parameters. The stream containing great amount of fine sediment had extensive agricultural development in its catchment area. Thus these substrata differences among the streams were attributable to the surface soil erosion and bank erosion at agricultural fields. Fine sediment progressively accumulated in streambed materials under normal flow conditions, resulting in a decrease in openwork gravels and hydraulic conductivity. Losing the interstitial space of gravel bed will have detrimental effects on benthic fish and invertebrate and other aquatic biota that require these habitats in their life cycles. In order to maintain healthy stream ecosystem, we need to pay more at-tention on the conditions of fine sediment and bed materials, and to seek effective meas-ures to prevent fine sediment production and deposition. The sampling methods applied in this study were proved to be useful to investigate fine sediment and hydraulic conductivity of the bed materials.
