Summary:

Suspended sediment constitutes about 90% of the total river sediment transport. Recognition of river sediment transport, its kind intensity is indispensable in designing, execution, and operation of objects realized for needs of water economy. It is of great importance in water reservoir silting forecast.
Intensity of suspended sediment transport may be determined by use of var-ious methods i.e. direct ones - measurement methods and indirect - calculation ones. Among the direct ones the following ones may be distinguished: bathometric, photometric, electro-resistance, ultrasonic and radioisotope method. Indirect methods permit to calculate sediment transport basing upon empiric, semi-empiric and theoretical equations. Description of suspended sediment transport based on empiric investigation is connected with the necessity of introduction of hydraulic parameters describing water flow and parameters characterizing suspended sedi-ment. Introduction of these parameters into description of water and sediment movement requires consideration of their reciprocate dynamic influence. Determi-nation of water flow velocity, distribution in the river bed section, forces, and stresses acting on the bottom characterizing the beginning of movement is also significant. Distribution of suspended sediment concentration, taking into regard its granulometric composition and fall velocity of particular grains, as well as hy-draulic parameters, permit description of transport of the water-sediment mixture and determination of transportability of the sediment.
The aim of the present paper is to present some of those methods of sus-pended sediment transport determination. Among the most frequently applied in-direct methods of appraisal of suspended sediment transport used in Poland those basing upon a determined mass of eroded soil in the basin may be mentioned. From those the most commonly applied is, up till now, the Reniger-Dębski's approach based on classification of denudation intensity and the approach of runoff denudation indices used by Brański and the DR-USLE method based upon the universal soil loss equation USLE in which the index of sediment discharge is de-termined by use of the method given by Rohel. Among the calculation methods based on appraisal of parameters describing water and sediment discharge in river the van Rijn's approach is more and more frequently applied. The less popular method MUSLE was also introduced in the paper and the not applied in the Poland Bijker's approach was presented.
Applying the DR-USLE method a relatively smallest difference in results of sediment transport, opposite to Brański's or Reniger-Dębski's approaches, was obtained. This points at possible applicability of the DR-USLE method in calcula-tion of the amount of transported sediment in case hydrological data are missing. The MUSLE method permits to take into account the dynamics of the sediment flow. In this method it is, however, necessary to dispose of hydrograms of freshet waves. They can be used mainly in case of lack of bathymetric data. The possibility of the use of Bijker' and van Rijn's approaches was showed a possibility of adaptation of this methods in calculations of suspended sediment transport. They require, however, performance of calibration works.