Fractal nature of time series in the sediment transport phenomenon

The purpose of the present study is to investigate the presence of fractal behaviors in the sediment transport phenomenon to consider the possibility of using a fractal approach for suspended sediment characterization. Suspended sediment concentration data collected from the Yellow River basin at Tongguan, Shanxi, China are studied. The power spectrum, the empirical probability distribution function, the statistical moment scaling function and the autocorrelation function are used as indicators to investigate the presence of fractal. The results from the fractal identification methods indicate that the sediment data exhibit fractal behavior.