Apportioning sediment sources in a grassland dominated agricultural catchment in the UK using a new tracing framework

A novel tracing framework combining conventional sediment source fingerprinting and a dual signature tracking method has recently been tested in a grassland catchment in Cumbria, northwest England, UK. The former component of the framework provided information on the relative importance of generic sediment sources characterised as pasture (75+/-1%) or arable (9+/-1%) surface soils, damaged road verges (6+/-1%), channel banks/subsurface sources (9+/-1%) and the local sewage treatment works (1+/-1%), whereas the latter component was used to apportion sediment loss from grass fields between poached gateways (1+/-1%) or cattle tracks (28+/-1%) and wider areas of general pugging and poaching damage (46+/-1%). Uncertainty and prior information are explicitly recognised by the novel source tracing framework.