100 years of sedimentation study by the USGS

On January 15, 1889, the U.S. Geological Survey began collecting sediment data on the Rio Grande at Embudo, New Mexico. During the past 100 years the U.S. Geological Survey's Water Resources Division (WRD) has collected daily sediment data at more than 1,200 sites. Projects have addressed the problems associated with reservoir construction, agricultural irrigation projects, energy production, and transport and deposition of pollutants sorbed to sediments. The Survey has been active as a charter member of the Federal Interagency Sediment Project and currently has three full-time hydrologists working on the project. The WRD's sediment-research projects have covered a wide variety of subjects from the fundamental theories of resistance to flow and sediment transport in alluvial channels to lunar erosion mechanisms.