TRACING 2021-2024 – Feedback on international events to develop novel strategies of sediment tracing in catchments and river systems

Several innovative techniques have been developed recently opening up new avenues to establish the 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. 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.

This presentation will present the main outcomes of the Thematic School organised in 2024 and the Scientific Meeting Days organised in 2022 and 2023 as a follow-up of a first training week organised in 2021 to bring together international experts working on these topics together. Based on the publication of an opinion paper (https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11368-022-03203-1), new strategies to publish and disseminate sediment tracing databases will be presented. An example of formatted dataset will be given, with the objective to test research hypotheses based on multiple datasets adopting the same format of data/meta-data. Other perspectives regarding improvements of the sediment fingerprinting method in terms of modelling, tracer options and selection will also be presented.