Sediment transport is the suite of physical processes governing the entrainment, movement, and deposition of particulate material (clastic or biogenic) by a transporting medium, typically water, air, or ice. In fluvial and coastal systems, it is controlled by fluid shear stress, turbulence, grain size, density, and bed roughness, and occurs as bedload, suspended load, or wash load. Sediment transport underpins channel and shoreline morphodynamics, stratigraphic architecture, and landscape evolution, and is commonly quantified using transport equations (e.g., Shields parameter–based formulations) and numerical models that couple hydrodynamics with sediment entrainment, advection, diffusion, and deposition.
Ask people how Stonehenge was built and you'll hear stories of sledges, ropes, boats and sheer human determination to haul stones from across Britain to Salisbury Plain, in south-west England. Others might mention giants, ...
Earth Sciences
Jan 21, 2026
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Through sand extraction and the disposal of dredged harbor silt, about 200 million tons of sediment are relocated every year in the coastal waters of the North Sea. The Wadden Sea is particularly strongly affected. This is ...
Earth Sciences
Jan 21, 2026
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A new study by the University of Minnesota challenges previous classifications paleontologists use to determine how the fossil record is formed. They investigated how dinosaur and mammal bones are transported and buried by ...
Paleontology & Fossils
Jan 12, 2026
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30
The river Rhine is estimated to carry between 3,000 and 4,700 metric tons of macrolitter—pieces of litter larger than 25 millimeters in size—towards the North Sea every year, according to research published in Communications ...
Environment
Jan 8, 2026
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Recurring high-energy flood events are not the exception but the rule in the Ahr Valley in western Germany—and this occurs over periods of centuries to millennia. This is shown in a study recently published in the journal ...
Earth Sciences
Jan 5, 2026
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What happens as a raindrop impacts bare soil has been fairly well-studied, but what happens to raindrops afterward is poorly understood. We know that the initial splash of raindrops on soil contributes to erosion, but a new ...
While much of Perseverance's work focuses on ancient rocks that record Mars' long-lost rivers and lakes, megaripples offer a rare opportunity to examine processes that are still shaping the surface today. Megaripples are ...
Planetary Sciences
Dec 22, 2025
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24
A team from the Centro Nacional de Investigación sobre la Evolución Humana (CENIEH) has collaborated with researchers from the University of Málaga (UMA) and the University of Córdoba (UCO) on an article published in the ...
Earth Sciences
Dec 11, 2025
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17
A build-up of ultra-fine sediment in riverbeds is creating oxygen-starved conditions that threaten fish spawning grounds and freshwater invertebrates, new research on the River Taw in Devon has revealed. The study is published ...
Plants & Animals
Oct 21, 2025
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14
A new Stanford study challenges the decades-old view that the rise of land plants half a billion years ago dramatically changed the shapes of rivers.
Earth Sciences
Aug 21, 2025
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