Articles | Volume 21, issue 1
https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-21-571-2017
https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-21-571-2017
Research article
 | 
27 Jan 2017
Research article |  | 27 Jan 2017

Quantifying uncertainty on sediment loads using bootstrap confidence intervals

Johanna I. F. Slaets, Hans-Peter Piepho, Petra Schmitter, Thomas Hilger, and Georg Cadisch

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Quantifying uncertainty on sediment loads using bootstrap confidence intervals J. I. F. Slaets, H.-P. Piepho, P. Schmitter, H. P. Hilger, and G. Cadisch https://www.uni-hohenheim.de/bioinformatik/beratung/index.htm

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Short summary
Determining measures of uncertainty on loads is not trivial, as a load is a product of concentration and discharge per time point, summed up over time. A bootstrap approach enables the calculation of confidence intervals on constituent loads. Ignoring the uncertainty on the discharge will typically underestimate the width of 95 % confidence intervals by around 10 %. Furthermore, confidence intervals are asymmetric, with the largest uncertainty on the upper limit.