Sediment is a leading cause of habitat degradation in rivers of the U.S. and worldwide. Management strategies that focus on reducing sediment should be based on a sound understanding of sediment sources contributing to the sediment flux and overall sediment budget of the watershed being investigated. USGS has been developing and implementing use of the sediment-fingerprinting approach to identify sources of fine-grained sediment; sediment budget techniques have been applied to provide information on channel  and upland processes that contribute, store, and deliver sediment.  This talk will focus on state-of-art sediment fingerprinting approaches including ‘old fashioned’ methods for sediment budgets.