The possible role of agricultural land drains in sediment delivery to a small reservoir, Worcestershire, UK: A multiparameter fingerprint study

Recent monitoring of a small (1.5 km2) UK experimental catchment has shown that specific sediment yields are c. 100 t km-2 year-1 and that agricultural land drains contribute >50% of this yield. In an attempt to identify the impact of land drainage on longer term sediment yields and sources, a sedimentary sequence spanning six centuries has been recovered from a nearby reservoir in a catchment of similar soil type and drainage history. A 210Pb chronology has been established for the lake sediments and a range of other gamma emitting radionuclides, physical and mineral magnetic properties have been used to identify sediment sources and the possible impact of drainage history on sediment accumulation rates. The most significant changes in sediment accumulation and sediment properties occurred in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries. These appear to relate to a short period of arable expansion during the Second World War and to phases of agricultural land drainage installed in the catchment between the 1960s and 1970s.