Hello Saeed,

You can think of 'structural' features as elements that exist in the landscape or environment, even when there is no runoff or sediment transport (i.e. during dry weather). They might include the location and dimensions of patches of bedrock outctop, or patches of plants, or gullies, rills, roads, bunds, etc. 'Functional' connectivity means how the connectivity actually operates when the system is transporting water and sediment. This would clearly depend on things like the length of time rain lasts, how intense the rain is, how wet the soil might already have been when rain began. Structural connectivity in general would only change relatively slowly, but the 'functional' connectivity could change from minute-to-minute or over hours.

Hope this helps,

best wishes

David

Hello David,

Thank you. Your answer is very interesting and useful. According to your answer, as a conclusion, we can say Structural and Functional sediment connectivities have a hard and soft nature, respectively, in which the former relates to physical characteristics and the latter to soil erosion and sediment transport processes.

Could you tell me what you think about their acting? As far as I am concerned, the status of sediment connectivity, and sediment transport as well, in a watershed refer to the interaction between structural and functional sediment connectivity. Therefore, to achieving a holistic vision of sediment connectivity and the related process we need to investigate both of them simultaneously.

Yours truly

Saeed