Sediment source fingerprinting: benchmarking recent outputs, remaining challenges and emerging themes

Area of Science:

• Environmental Science
• Geomorphology
• Sedimentology

Background:

• Sediment source fingerprinting is a widely used technique to identify sediment origins.
• The approach has seen significant growth in research output and applications globally.
• Standardization and methodological diversity present challenges in the field.

Purpose of the Study:

• To review the current state-of-the-art in sediment source fingerprinting.
• To identify remaining challenges and emerging themes in the methodology.
• To provide guidance for researchers on best practices and future research directions.

Main Methods:

• A systematic literature review of papers published between 2013-2019 using Web of Science and Google Scholar.
• Benchmarking recent studies (2018-2019) against a 2017 methodological decision-tree.
• Analysis of publication trends by study area, country, and tracer types.

Main Results:

• Global popularity of sediment source fingerprinting is on an upward trend.
• Lack of standardization and procedural diversity are key issues.
• Growing uptake of critical requirements for robust applications in recent years.

Conclusions:

• The review signposts investigators towards established benchmarks for robust sediment fingerprinting.
• It highlights critical research challenges, including spatial/temporal variability and tracer selection.
• Emerging themes include novel tracers, integration with age-dating and pollutant studies, and software development.