Suspended sediment fingerprinting and uncertainty estimation (Case study: Zidasht-Fashandak sub-watershed in Taleghan)

In order to manage and implement conservational activities in watershed successfully, it is necessary to determine the sediment sources. In recent years, sediment fingerpering techniques have been used for estimating sediment sources contribution. With respect to small source samples, having many answer as a result of over fitting, there are some uncertainties in estimated sources contribution. In this study, the uncertainty associated with the multivariate mixing model was estimated using Monte Carlo simulation and GLUE approach in Zidasht-Fashandak sub- watershed. The sediment and source samples were taken in the study area and then, 54 geochemistry and three organic characteristics were measured. 17 elements were also selected as optimum tracer composition using Kruskal–Wallis H-test and multivariate discriminate analysis. Meanwhile, sources contribution were estimated using multivariate mixing models. Results showed higher contribution of subsurface sources than the surface resources. Also, the distance between lower and upper limits for all sources and resolutely uncertainty bands were high.