An informal collaboration has been established to encourage the development of a North American network for the collection, analysis, and interpretation of fluvial-sediment data. The principal objective of the network is to define continental-scale gradients of mean yield, variability of loads, particle-size distributions, and natural regimes for suspended and bed sediment released during unstressed to minimally stressed conditions of land use. Extending that goal, a second objective is to identify stream reaches where fluxes of sediment and associated contaminants now are elevated to levels at which water quality and ecological integrity are compromised. It is recognized that a huge reserve of sediment data has been compiled for North America, but these data, expensive to collect and difficult to interpret, have not all been obtained with standard protocols for network design.