Directional Kriging: A Proposal to Determine Sediment Transport

Since the beginning of the 1980s, several methods for the study of sediment transport dynamics have emerged that are based on the distribution of granulometric parameters. These studies are limited to current sediments of three basic environments: fluvial, coastal, and estuary, for which the objective is to determine the direction of global transport and delineate specific areas of deposition, erosion, or equilibrium. These studies show a growing demand for planning mechanisms that find sailing areas that take advantage of wave energy in estuaries. This work is related, specifically, to sedimentary transport for aqueous flow in estuaries and near-coast areas. In this paper, we present an alternative analysis of sediment transport dynamics that is based on a 2D interpolation procedure that takes into account the vectorial kriging methodology, which considers the spatial characterisation of a directional stochastic process in the interpolation of the vector azimuth. For example, to study sediment transport dynamics, we used the directional kriging approach to two groups of granulometric data sets: one belonging to the Schelde River, situated between Holland and Belgium, and the other belonging to the Itanhom River estuary in the south of Bahia, Brazil. An advantage of this method is the possible control of the prediction errors of the transport direction. The results obtained throughout this robust method are quite satisfactory compared with the energetic conditions observed in situ.