A high-frequency, long-term data set of hydrology and sediment yield: the alpine badland catchments of Draix-Bléone Observatory

Abstract

Draix-Bléone critical zone observatory was created in 1983 to study erosion processes in a mountainous badland region of the French Southern Alps. Six catchments of varying size (0.001 to 22 km2) and vegetation cover are equipped to measure water and sediment fluxes, both as bedload and suspended load. This paper presents the core dataset of the observatory, including rainfall and meteorology, high-frequency discharge and suspended-sediment concentration, and event-scale bedload volumes. The longest records span almost 40 years. Measurement and data-processing methods are presented, as well as data quality assessment procedures and examples of results. All the data presented in this paper are available on the open repository https://doi.org/10.17180/obs.draix (Draix-Bleone Observatory, 2015), and a 5-year snapshot is available for review at https://doi.org/10.57745/BEYQFQ (Klotz et al., 2023).