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.
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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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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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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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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On May 12, 2008, the magnitude 7.9 Wenchuan earthquake shook central China, its destructive tremors spreading from the flank of the Longmen Shan, or Dragon's Gate Mountains, along the eastern margin of the Tibetan Plateau.
Earth Sciences
Aug 13, 2025
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105
Rivers are Earth's arteries. Water, sediment and nutrients self-organize into diverse, dynamic channels as they journey from the mountains to the sea. Some rivers carve out a single pathway, while others divide into multiple ...
Earth Sciences
Jul 11, 2025
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Analysis has shown a boulder weighing almost 1,200 tons in Tonga is one of the largest known wave-transported rocks in the world, providing new insights into the Pacific region's history and risk of tsunamis.
Earth Sciences
May 21, 2025
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