Sediment erosion laws form the basis for most landscape evolution models and guide geomorphologists in the pursuit of understanding how landscapes evolve. This focus on the alluvial surface, however, ignores the role of intrinsic feedbacks between sediment transport and bedrock weathering in shaping Earth's landforms. Here, we present a new, parsimonious explanation for the origin and maintenance of pediments, piedmont junctions, and tors, which emerge spontaneously in a numerical model coupling bedrock weathering and sediment transport. The spatial uniformity of the thin regolith mantle that often characterizes pediments is a manifestation of a negative feedback between bedrock weathering and regolith thickness: if regolith thins (thickens) by sediment transport, the regolith production rate will increase (decrease), maintaining an equilibrium regolith thickness on the piedmont. We propose that high infiltration capacities and the instability of ephemeral channel banks in arid and semiarid environments suppress fluvial incision and promote the smoothness of pediments. A positive feedback between bedrock weathering and regolith thickness causes tor growth: if regolith thins locally below a critical value, regolith production slows while surrounding areas continue to weather and erode more rapidly. We suggest that many pedimented and tor-studded landscapes may therefore be a consequence of intrinsic sediment transport-weathering feedbacks mediated by climatic and tectonic conditions, not by lithologic templates.
[1] We present model results suggesting that a physical erosion-bedrock weathering feedback is responsible for the development of isolated bedrock knobs (tors/inselbergs) that often punctuate otherwise smooth pediments of homogeneous basement lithology. Tors and larger, more heavily jointed and morphologically complex exposures, inselbergs, may arise as a consequence of fluctuations in rainfall and sediment transport conditions combined with a bedrock weathering mechanism that depends on regolith thickness. Hydrogeochemical considerations and field observations in arid, granitic environments suggest that the relationship between weathering rate and regolith thickness exhibits a maximum for a finite thickness of cover. We have encapsulated this simple erosionweathering feedback in a numerical model simulating arid/semiarid landscape evolution that produces low-sloping pediments punctuated by tors. Tors form during periods of higher effective moisture, resulting in local base level incision and regolith thinning on pediments, invoking a transition in which mantled surfaces lower at rates exceeding the bare bedrock weathering rate. This condition favors the emergence and growth of tors in areas covered by regolith thickness less than a threshold value. Subsequent shifts in climate or local base level that restore sediment surface lowering rates less than the bare bedrock weathering rate will lead to a progressive decrease in tor height and, ultimately, their disappearance. Thus, according to this model, tors in arid environments represent possibly transient features related to fluctuations in climate or local transport conditions rather than palimpsests of an ancient landscape derived from differential subsurface weathering followed by regolith stripping.
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