抄録
The role of large rivers in conveying sediments from continents to oceans has long interested geoscientists but until relatively recently the quantitative description of sediment cascades within large river catchments had been somewhat limited. Renewed interest in global biogeochemical cycles has refocused attention on questions of how large rivers respond to disturbance imposed by changing climate and tectonic conditions or from human-induced influences on sediment production and conveyance. Some progress has been made in examining the contemporary and spatial dynamics of sediment delivery in some Asian river basins, where the exposure of populations to water and sediment-related disasters is acute. This paper considers how these essentially desk-top studies of sediment cascades can be linked effectively to field-based studies in order to contribute to explaining and predicting sediment disasters. It focuses on current understanding of response to disturbance in large rivers and considers the conceptual challenge of representing connectivity and discontinuity in sediment cascades.
