SedSAT3 — Sediment Source Assessment Tool
SedSAT3 is a free, open-source application for sediment source fingerprinting and apportionment. Using the elemental and isotopic composition of sediment samples, SedSAT3 quantifies how much each potential source — for example agricultural fields, stream banks, forests, or unpaved roads — contributes to the sediment found at a downstream target (receptor) site.
SedSAT3 is an update to the original SedSAT tool (Gorman-Sanisaca et al., 2017) and was developed in collaboration with the U.S. Geological Survey. It implements both deterministic and Bayesian approaches to the sediment mixing (chemical mass balance) problem, including Levenberg–Marquardt maximum likelihood estimation, genetic algorithm optimization, and full Bayesian inference via Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC).
What SedSAT3 can do
- Import and prepare data directly from a multi-tab Excel workbook of source and target elemental profiles.
- Diagnose your data with outlier detection, correlation analysis, bracketing tests, and distribution fitting.
- Correct for organic matter and particle size using linear or power-law regression.
- Select effective tracers using discriminant function analysis (stepwise, two-way, one-vs-the-rest, and multi-way) and analysis of variance.
- Apportion sources using maximum likelihood (Levenberg–Marquardt), genetic algorithm, or Bayesian methods.
- Quantify uncertainty through Bayesian credible intervals and bootstrap-based error analysis.
- Process many target samples at once with batch versions of the fingerprinting tools.
Get started
- Download SedSAT3 for Windows, Linux, or MacOS.
- Read the documentation and user’s manual.
- Download the sample dataset to follow along.
- Watch the instructional videos.
- Browse or contribute to the open-source code.
Developed by Arash Massoudieh (The Catholic University of America) in collaboration with Allen C. Gellis and Cara L. Peterman-Phipps (U.S. Geological Survey).