Lastly, this study demonstrates that the cumulative effects of timber harvesting at the basin scale are expressed as an increase in sediment accumulation rates and a shift in sediment grain size toward finer particles in the marine sink. Because a similar pattern has been observed on the Eel margin (e.g., Sommerfield et al., 2002, Leithold et al., 2005 and Sommerfield and Wheatcroft, 2007), it is tempting to imply that timber harvesting results in the delivery of more fine grained sediment to river
IRAK-1-4 Inhibitor I and that this material is simply propagated through the sediment routing system (i.e., the grain size signal on the shelf sink is set by the source). Unfortunately, the complexities of
sediment delivery to the seabed and its subsequent reworking make this simple conclusion premature. Rather it may simply be that timber harvesting, by increasing the frequency of mass wasting events on hillslopes, leads to an increase in sediment export, but no change in grain size. Instead the observed fining may arise from the inability of post depositional reworking to winnow fines (e.g., Law et al., 200
cool under increased deposition rates.
