Tracing Day 2024

Tracing Day 2024

TRACING 2024

Thematic International Study Day

Novel strategies of sediment tracing in catchments and river systems

Sunday 14 April 2024

Meeting place: VERA Laboratory, Faculty of Physics, University of Vienna, Austria

Main organizers:

Dr. Silke Merchel (Faculty of Physics, Univ. of Vienna, Austria), Dr. Sabine Kraushaar (PH Burgenland)

and Dr. Olivier Evrard (LSCE, Univ. Paris-Saclay, France)

With the support of the following institutions:

 

 

Description of the Tracing Day 2024

Context and objectives of the event

Soil and water resources that are essential to human and aquatic life are increasingly threatened by human activities and the impacts of land use and climate change. Sediment and sediment-associated constituents, in particular, can contribute substantially to water-quality impairment. In order to take effective conservation measures to protect these resources from erosion and alteration, and use them in a more sustainable way, a preliminary assessment is needed to: (1) quantify soil losses; (2) identify the sources and the pathways of runoff and sediment across the landscapes to the river systems; and (3) calculate the transfer and residence times of sediment and particle-bound contaminants in the river network.

Several innovative techniques have been developed recently opening up new avenues to establish this assessment of sediment flux in the critical zone. These innovative techniques include the tracing or “fingerprinting” methods to identify the sources and quantify the dynamics of sediment and particle-bound contaminants, high resolution topographic mapping using various emerging technologies (i.e Lidar) to map connectivity and sediment pathways, the development and installation of multiple low-cost sensors in the rivers. However, the use of these techniques is often associated with several methodological and statistical limitations, that are often reported although rarely addressed in the framework of concerted actions taken at the level of the international scientific community. Among the main methodological difficulties associated with these techniques are the following:

• conservativeness of tracers during the erosion to delivery cycle;
• collection and representativeness of sampling in the field;
• use of correction factors to remove the effect associated with differences in particle size or organic matter content between source and target samples;
• Bayesian versus multivariate statistical analyses;
• calibration of sensors/samplers installed in the field/in rivers;
• validation and uncertainty of model results.

In this context, the objective of this Thematic Scientific Meeting Day is to bring together international experts working on these topics together. It is organised to follow-up the discussions initiated during specifically dedicated sessions organised during the last years at the General Assembly of the European Geoscience Union (EGU) and the American Geophysical Union (AGU). This event will take place on Sunday 14 April 2024 – just before the 2024 edition of the EGU conference starts – to facilitate the participation of European and non-European colleagues and minimize the environmental impact of the meeting. In the future, we hope that other similar events will be organised in the framework of international conferences (e.g. EGU 2025) to continue stimulating discussions about this topic in coming years.

Audience

Researchers/lecturers, postdoctoral fellows, PhD students and MSc students.

Around 30 participants are expected.

The official language of the Thematic Day will be English.

Logistics

The event will take place at the

University of Vienna
Faculty of Physics
Isotope Physics
VERA Laboratory
Waehringer Str. 17/Hoftrakt (backyard house)
1090 Vienna/Austria

How do I find the VERA laboratories.pdf

It will be organised on Sunday 14 April from 10:00am am to 4:30 pm just before the ice-breaking reception of the EGU2024 General Assembly.

Link to the website of the EGU General Assembly 2024

To plan your journey and identify the best itinerary to the Tracing Day in Vienna, please consult the Wiener Linien transport website.

Participation cost

The participation to the event will be free, and the intention is to provide free-of-charge coffee breaks and a lunch to the confirmed participants. All the participants should have registered in advance through contacting the organisers (Silke Merchel, Sabine Kraushaar and Olivier Evrard). No participation in hybrid mode will be possible.

 

Programme [under construction]

 

Previous initiatives (TRACING 2021 Thematic School and Tracing Days since 2022)

Information on the TRACING 2021 School is available on this page.

A publication describing the main outputs of the discussions held during the TRACING School has been accepted in the Journal of Soils and Sediments in March 2022.

Evrard, O., et al. (2022). Improving the design and implementation of sediment fingerprinting studies: Summary and outcomes of the TRACING 2021 Scientific School. Journal of Soils and Sediments 22, 1648-1661.

You can access it from here.

International Tracing Days were organised in 2022 and 2023. The 2024 event is therefore the third edition of the Tracing Day held in Vienna.

                                              Tracing Day 2022                                                                                                       Tracing Day 2023