Table 1 Satellite-derived sediment discharge (SSD) summary

River	In situ	SSD	Grain size	Grain size range	Range of the sedimentation zone area	SNR in GRACE data
River	Mt year⁻¹	Mt year⁻¹	µm	µm	×1000 km²	SNR in GRACE data
Amazon	778	560 ± 90	10	10	630	2.4
Amazon	778	610 ± 165	5	5	3000	0.8
Ganges-Brahmaputra	1081	1140 ± 200	10	10	210	1.2
Ganges-Brahmaputra	1081	−890 ± 750	–	–	–	0.1
Changjiang	477	430 ± 100	5	5	110	1.3
Changjiang	477	330 ± 100	20	10–100	40–12	1.0
Mississippi	51	−130 ± 310	–	–	–	0.1
Mississippi	51	−190 ± 380	–	–	–	0.1
Irrawaddy	333	−1100 ± 610	–	–	–	0.5
Irrawaddy	333	50 ± 270	10	10	220	0.3
Indus	206	150 ± 70	30	30–100	15–10	0.6
Indus	206	350 ± 120	10	10	80	1.5
Orinoco	76	−250 ± 450	–	–	–	0.2
Orinoco	76	−110 ± 240	–	–	–	0.1
Godavari	119	230 ± 90	70	70–100	24–12	3.0
Godavari	119	650 ± 120	40	40–50	71–43	5.8
Mekong	75	580 ± 150	40	20–100	12–8	0.4
Mekong	75	80 ± 110	40	40–100	8	0.4
Magdalena	150	460 ± 90	40	40–50	50–30	2.3
Magdalena	150	670 ± 90	50	40–70	50–16	4.8
Fly	111	−1980 ± 660	–	–	–	0.9
Fly	111	−570 ± 470	–	–	–	0.3
Congo	32	150 ± 90	100	50–100	8–5	0.9
Congo	32	170 ± 300	5	5	590	0.1
Huanghe	152	−860 ± 450	–	–	–	0.5
Huanghe	152	−60 ± 150	–	–	–	0.1

Results for GRACE s1 and s2 solutions are in bold and italic fonts, respectively. “Grain size” is the grain sizes that minimize the difference between the SSD and the in situ sediment discharge, for each river and each hydrological correction applied on GRACE solutions (only for rivers which are SSD positive). “Grain size range” gives the range of grain sizes for which the SSD does not differ by more than 10% from the best SSD (obtained for the best grain size). Narrow grain size ranges suggest that GRACE could help constraining the grain size of the particles that are responsible for the largest mass accumulation out of each river. The entire range of grain sizes tested in this work is 5–100 µm. The area of the sedimentation zone associated to the grain size range is also given. The last column is the SNR for each river (see also Methods)

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