The elemental composition of sediments in rivers is the product of physical and chemical erosion of rocks, which is then transported across drainage networks. A corollary is that fluvial sedimentary geochemistry can be used to understand geologic, climatic and geomorphic processes. We develop a simple methodology to predict elemental compositions of river sediments from digital elevation data and geochemical maps using erosional models. We test these models using a new sedimentary geochemical dataset from carefully chosen sample sites. Sediment compositions are predicted by formally integrating eroding substrates with known compositions acros... more