2018GL078351.pdf (1.56 MB)
Catchment drainage network scaling laws found experimentally in overland flow morphologies
journal contribution
posted on 2018-10-19, 08:47 authored by Mohsen Cheraghi, Andrea Rinaldo, Graham SanderGraham Sander, Paolo Perona, D. Andrew BarryThe scaling relation between the drainage area and stream length (Hack's law), along with exceedance probabilities of drainage area, discharge, and upstream flow network length, is well known for channelized fluvial regions. We report here on a laboratory experiment on an eroding unconsolidated sediment for which no channeling occurred. Laser scanning was used to capture the morphological evolution of the sediment. High-intensity, spatially nonuniform rainfall ensured that the morphology changed substantially over the 16-hr experiment. Based on the surface scans and precipitation distribution, overland flow was estimated with the D8 algorithm, which outputs a flow network that was analyzed statistically. The above-mentioned scaling and exceedance probability relationships for this overland flow network are the same as those found for large-scale catchments and for laboratory experiments with observable channels. In addition, the scaling laws were temporally invariant, even though the network dynamically changed over the course of experiment.
Funding
Financial support was provided by the Swiss National Science Foundation(200021-144320).
History
School
- Architecture, Building and Civil Engineering
Published in
Geophysical Research LettersVolume
45Issue
18Pages
9614 - 9622Citation
CHERAGHI, M. ... et al, 2018. Catchment drainage network scaling laws found experimentally in overland flow morphologies. Geophysical Research Letters, 45(18), pp. 9614-9622.Publisher
American geophysical Union (AGU) © The AuthorsVersion
- VoR (Version of Record)
Publisher statement
This work is made available according to the conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0) licence. Full details of this licence are available at: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/Acceptance date
2018-08-31Publication date
2018-09-22Notes
This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs License, which permits use and distribution in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, the use is non-commercial and no modifications or adaptations are made.ISSN
0094-8276eISSN
1944-8007Publisher version
Language
- en