Hydrologic‐response‐driven sediment transport at a regional scale,process‐based simulation

Assessing hydrologically driven erosion at regional scales from a process‐based perspective presents a significant challenge. Most regional‐scale erosion assessments are based upon a simple steady‐state hydrology foundation. For this study, the sediment transport version of the physics‐based Integrated Hydrology Model (InHM), excited by synthetically generated rainfall, was employed to assess long‐term hydrologically driven erosion for a regional‐scale island boundary‐value problem. The spatiotemporal dynamics of runoff generation, erosion, and deposition are illustrated through saturation, water depth, velocity, and sediment concentration results. The simulations demonstrate that process‐based assessment for concept development is both feasible and tractable at regional spatial and human time scales. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.