Assessing the effects of land disturbance on sediment yield requires quantification of erosion and sediment connectivity. Off-road vehicle (ORV) tracks represent sources of sediment pollution to coral reefs and coastal wetlands in a dry tropical setting of Southwestern Puerto Rico. This study assesses their contribution through a combined empirical and modeling approach. Rainfall simulation experiments and sediment accumulation in detention ponds indicate that ORV track erosion rates are 31–83 Mg ha⁻¹ yr⁻¹ and these are one to two orders of magnitude greater than background erosion rates. A new sediment connectivity model predicted a watershed-scale sediment yield of 2.7 Mg ha⁻¹ yr⁻¹ from a 11.9 km km⁻² of ORV track network, and this exceeds those from comparable watersheds in the Caribbean. The spatially explicit nature of the model outputs allows for site-specific quantification of sediment contributions and for an evaluation of the effectiveness of mitigation methods such as detention ponds.

评估土地扰动对沉积物产量的影响需要量化侵蚀和沉积物连通性。越野车（ORV）航迹代表了波多黎各西南部热带干燥地区珊瑚礁和沿海湿地的沉积物污染源。这项研究通过经验和建模相结合的方法评估了他们的贡献。降雨模拟实验和滞留池中的沉积物堆积表明，ORV径迹侵蚀速率为31–83 Mg ha ^-1 yr ^-1，比背景侵蚀速率大一到两个数量级。一个新的泥沙连通性模型预测了从11.9 km km ^-2的流域尺度泥沙产量为2.7 Mg ha ^-1 yr ^-1轨道网的数量，这超出了加勒比地区类似流域的数量。模型输出的空间明确性质允许对沉积物贡献进行特定位置的量化，并可以评估诸如滞留池之类的缓解方法的有效性。