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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Status: closed
Status: closed
AC: Author comment | RC: Referee comment | SC: Short comment | EC: Editor comment
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AR: Author's response | RR: Referee report | ED: Editor decision
ED: Publish subject to minor revisions (further review by Editor) (26 Oct 2016) by Stacey Archfield
AR by Johanna Slaets on behalf of the Authors (06 Dec 2016)  Author's response   Manuscript 
ED: Publish subject to technical corrections (23 Dec 2016) by Stacey Archfield
AR by Johanna Slaets on behalf of the Authors (29 Dec 2016)  Manuscript 
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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.