Interpreting nesting storm event suspended sediment discharge hysteresis relationships at large catchment scales

Reducing soil erosion and sediment delivery into rivers is a major aim for land management in New Zealand. Therefore, it is important to identify areas of sediment generation and their relationship to in-stream suspended sediment concentrations and water quality attributes. It is possible to infer and assess sediment sources and dynamics using storm event suspended sediment concentration-discharge hysteresis shape and loop direction. Research in small catchments has achieved some success; however, research in larger (>103 km2) catchments has shown the inherent difficulty of interpreting hysteresis patterns at larger scales. In this paper, we use a nested, long-term suspended sediment monitoring program across a large catchment (3,903 km2: Manawatū in New Zealand) to address these challenges.