Mobility of river tracer pebbles over different timescales

An edited version of this paper was published by AGU. Copyright (2002) American Geophysical Union. Tracer pebbles are widely used to learn about gravel transport along rivers. Movement over short times and distances is dominated by factors controlling entrainment: relative particle size and shear stress. Movement at longer scales also involves depositional factors: burial and reexposure and exchange between channels, bars, and other depositional environments. We mapped mixed-size tracers in six reaches of a small Scottish river after 2 and 8 years to investigate differences in relative and absolute mobility and infer the importance of burial and exchange. Patterns of relative mobility according to size and shear stress, both within and between reaches, did not change significantly. Some local bunching of tracers was apparent in both surveys, with redistribution from pools into riffles and bars. The main change was that virtual velocities were ~50% lower, and estimated gravel fluxes were also lower, in the longer term. This slowdown is attributed to vertical mixing giving decreased mobility as surface-seeded tracers become buried, long-term storage in bars and other less active parts of the system, and in this channel, advection of tracers downstream onto a finer bed giving higher relative size