Impact of climate change on sediment transpor: Case study Kolubara river (Serbia)

The fundamental idea of this research is to establish a connection between sediment transport data in the Kolubara River basin (Beli Brod profile) and the width of tree rings of silver fir (Abies alba) from Mount Bokšanica (1985-2004), utilizing dendrochronological methods. The goal is to link these two variables and associate geomorphological and climatological processes, assuming that precipitation plays a key role. This, in turn, opens up the possibility of reconstructing the geomorphological process of mechanical water erosion, i.e., sediment transport, provided that older tree ring samples are found. The study focuses on the aspects of contemporary climate change, considering precipitation as one of the primary climatic factors influencing the growth of wood mass, i.e., the width of tree rings, and river flow, i.e., sediment transport. Calculations were conducted for a twenty-year period from 1985 to 2004. The data pertains to the total sediment transport in the Kolubara River basin (Beli Brod profile) and the width of tree rings in fi r trees (silver fi r on Mount Bokšanica). The highest sediment transport was recorded in 1999 (304,516.9 tons), coinciding with the widest silver fi r tree rings on Mount Bokšanica - 4.4 mm. A statistically significant correlation at a 0.05% probability of risk acceptance was established, concluding that there is a linear relationship in the primary dataset with a 5% risk. When considering moving pentad values, there is a statistically significant correlation between both datasets and the dataset from which the biological trend was removed using the ARMA method (p = 0.01%). There is a concurrence of maximum values in both sets of moving pentads at the point of 1995, along with a high degree of autocorrelation. The initial hypothesis of this study is proven as there is spatial-temporal variability in these variables, which is a result of the impact of contemporary climate change.

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