Relationships between suspended sediment load discharge and the total number and length of stream segments

The discharge of suspended sediment load is an important indicator for estimating the intensity of erosional processes in drainage basins, but the laborious methodology required to establish it accounts for the small number of measurement stations. Therefore indirect evaluation methods, have been used, such as the number of stream segments and the sum of their lengths has been established by means of geometric progression individualizing drainage morphometrical models. In order to check if suspended sediment load is or not influenced by the sums of the number and lengths of stream segments the Bârlad basin has been taken as case study. Physico-geographical factors and the resistance of geological formations in this basin vary very little from one subbasin to another. The positive results obtained have enabled checking up these relationships in over 50 drainage basins of Romania located in the Carpathian Arc and in the Subcarpathian and Plateau areas. Because of great diversity of physico-geographical conditions within the analyzed basins lower determination coefficient values have been obtained.    Key words: Drainage model, number of segments, network length.