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| Titel |
Weathering and soil erosion at watershed scale in St. John, US Virgin Islands. |
| VerfasserIn |
Napoleon Gudiño, Thomas Kretzschmar, Sarah Gray |
| Konferenz |
EGU General Assembly 2015
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| Medientyp |
Artikel
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| Sprache |
Englisch
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| Digitales Dokument |
PDF |
| Erschienen |
In: GRA - Volume 17 (2015) |
| Datensatznummer |
250115014
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| Publikation (Nr.) |
 EGU/EGU2015-15865.pdf |
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| Zusammenfassung |
| Human activities may increase soil erosion and the delivery of land-based sediment into coastal waters from steep sub-tropical islands. These changes may also affect water-rock interaction, which alters the geochemistry of storm-water and the clay mineralogy of eroded sediments. The purpose of this analysis is to compare storm-water, sediment geochemistry and modeled erosion rates between developed and undeveloped watersheds on Saint John, United States Virgin Islands (USVI). The saturation index was calculated by “The Geochemist’s Workbench”, supported by X-Ray diffraction on clay minerals. The Revised and Modified Universal Soil Loss Equations were used to estimate both annual mean (2010) and storm-event (Hurricane Otto) based erosion rates. Relative concentration of illite was higher in Coral Bay. Calculated RUSLE/MUSLE-based erosion rates were higher for the developed compared to the undeveloped watersheds. Results of this investigation suggest that rural/urban development of watersheds may increase the weathering, soil erosion and coastal sedimentation causing a negative effect on the marine ecosystem in St. John USVI. |
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