Soil loss by erosion processes is one of the largest challenges for food production and reservoir siltation around the world. Information on sediment, nutrients and pollutants is required for designing effective control strategies. The estimation of sediment sources is difficult to get using conventional techniques, but sediment fingerprinting is a potentially valuable tool. This procedure intends to develop methods that enable to identify the apportionment of sediment sources from sediment mixtures. We developed a new tool to quantify the provenance of sediments in an agroforest catchment. For the first time, the procedure for the selection of the best combination of tracers was included in the tool package. An unmixing model algorithm is applied to the sediment samples to estimate the contribution of each possible source. The operations are compiled in an R package named FingerPro, which unmixes sediment samples after selecting the optimum set of tracers. An example from a well-studied Mediterranean catchment is included in the package to test the model. The sediment source apportionments are compared with previous results of soil redistributions where ¹³⁷Cs derived rates validate the unmixing results, highlighting the potential of sediment fingerprinting for quantifying the main sediment provenance. Fingerprinting techniques will allow us to better comprehend sediment transport to water ecosystems and reservoirs and its detrimental effect on the quality of the water and aquatic habitats. The FingerPro package provides further understanding of the unmixing procedure through the use of graphical and statistical tools, offering a broader and easier application of the technique.

侵蚀过程造成的土壤流失是全世界粮食生产和水库淤积的最大挑战之一。设计有效的控制策略需要有关沉积物，营养物质和污染物的信息。使用常规技术很难估算出沉积物来源，但是沉积物指纹图谱是潜在有价值的工具。该程序旨在开发能够识别沉积物混合物中沉积物来源分配的方法。我们开发了一种新工具来量化农林集水区沉积物的来源。工具包中首次包含了选择最佳示踪剂组合的程序。将解混模型算法应用于沉积物样本以估计每个可能来源的贡献。FingerPro，其中选择最佳组示踪物后unmixes沉积物样品。包装中包括一个经过精心研究的地中海流域的示例，以测试该模型。将沉积物来源的分配与先前的土壤再分配结果进行了比较，其中¹³⁷ Cs的衍生速率验证了拆解结果，突出了沉积物指纹识别对量化主要沉积物产地的潜力。指纹技术将使我们能够更好地理解沉积物向水生态系统和水库的迁移及其对水和水生生境质量的有害影响。该FingerPro 该软件包通过使用图形和统计工具提供了对分解过程的进一步了解，从而提供了更广泛，更轻松的技术应用。