The role of aquatic and riparian vegetation in driving morphodynamics of rivers is being increasingly recognized across all river types. Here, we focus on gravel-bed rivers, where the ability of vegetation to influence morphodynamics depends upon the retention and stabilization of predominantly sand and finer sediments to build landforms within the active channel. One aspect of such interactions among vegetation, river flows and transported sediments that has received little research attention is their contribution to within-channel storage of fine sediment as a potentially important component of the fine sediment budget of river reaches and catchments. In this article, we assemble some preliminary estimates of the fine sediments retained by vegetation across the active channels of four gravel-bed rivers (12 river reaches) representing a wide range in river planform (near-straight, meandering, braided), width (6–800 m), gradient (0.0008–0.004) and Q₂ flood (2–1100 m³ s⁻¹), and including reaches where submerged and emergent macrophytes and riparian trees and shrubs act as physical ecosystem engineers. Our results indicate that vegetation can retain sizeable quantities of fine sediment, ranging from 480 to >3000 kg m⁻² in emergent vegetation-engineered landforms, equivalent to 20–1000 kg m⁻² when averaged across the entire active channel area. Vegetation retains virtually all the fine sediments stored on the bed surface of these active channels, increasing from 78% in the lowest energy to 100% in the highest energy river reaches investigated, with major differences in the locations of these vegetated fine sediment stores according to river planform style and unit stream power. These preliminary estimates suggest that fine sediment retention and storage by vegetation is potentially an important component of within-channel sediment budgets as well as contributing to the hydrological, geomorphological and ecological functioning of rivers.

中文翻译：

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植物对砾石河活跃河道内细沙储存的影响：初步评估

所有河流类型都越来越认识到水生和河岸植被在驱动河流形态动力学中的作用。在这里，我们专注于砾石床河流，其中植被影响形态动力学的能力取决于主要是沙子和更细的沉积物的保留和稳定，以在活动河道内构建地貌。植被、河流流量和输送的沉积物之间相互作用的一个方面几乎没有受到研究的关注，其中一个方面是它们对细沉积物的河道内储存的贡献，作为河流河段和集水区细沉积物预算的潜在重要组成部分。在本文中，Q ₂洪水（2–1100 m ³  s ^-1），包括淹没和涌现的大型植物以及河岸树木和灌木充当物理生态系统工程师的河段。我们的结果表明，植被可以保留相当数量的细沉积物，在紧急植被工程地貌中，范围从 480 到 >3000 kg m ^-2，相当于 20-1000 kg m ^-2当在整个活动通道区域进行平均时。植被几乎保留了储存在这些活跃河道河床表面的所有细沉积物，从最低能量的 78% 增加到所调查的最高能量河流的 100%，这些植被细沉积物储存的位置存在重大差异河流平面样式和单位流功率。这些初步估计表明，植被对细沙的滞留和储存可能是河道内沉积物预算的重要组成部分，并有助于河流的水文、地貌和生态功能。