The Convex Profile of Bad-Land Divides

Davis, William S.

doi:10.1126/science.ns-20.508.245

Cited by 88 publications

(63 citation statements)

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“…Such a law has its origins in the works by Davis (1892) and Gilbert (1909), has been used in analytical and numerical models of landscape evolution (i.e. Culling, 1963;Kirkby, 1971;Koons, 1989;Anderson and Humphrey, 1989;Howard, 1994;see review in Fernandes and Dietrich, in prep.…”

Section: Theory For Colluvial Soil Thicknessmentioning

confidence: 97%

A process‐based model for colluvial soil depth and shallow landsliding using digital elevation data

Dietrich

Reiss

Hsu

et al. 1995

Hydrological Processes

564

463

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A model is proposed for predicting the spatial variation in colluvial soil depth, the results of which are used in a separate model to examine the effects of root strength and vertically varying saturated conductivity on slope stability. The soil depth model solves for the mass balance between soil production from underlying bedrock and the divergence of diffusive soil transport. This model is applied using high-resolution digital elevation data of a well-studied site in northern California and the evolving soil depth is solved using a finite difference model under varying initial conditions. The field data support an exponential decline of soil production with increasing soil depth and a diffusivity of about 50cm2/ yr. The predicted pattern of thick and thin colluvium corresponds well with field observations. Soil thickness on ridges rapidly obtain an equilibrium depth, which suggests that detailed field observations relating soil depth to local topographic curvature could further test this model. Bedrock emerges where the curvature causes divergent transport to exceed the soil production rate, hence the spatial pattern of bedrock outcrops places constraints on the production law.The infinite slope stability model uses the predicted soil depth to estimate the effects of root cohesion and vertically varying saturated conductivity. Low cohesion soils overlying low conductivity bedrock are shown to be least stable. The model may be most useful in analyses of slope instability associated with vegetation changes from either land use or climate change, although practical applications may be limited by the need to assign values to several spatially varying parameters. Although both the soil depth and slope stability models offer local mechanistic predictions that can be applied to large areas, representation of the finest scale valleys in the digital terrain model significantly influences local model predictions. This argues for preserving fine-scale topographic detail and using relatively fine grid sizes even in analyses of large catchments.

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Section: Theory For Colluvial Soil Thicknessmentioning

confidence: 97%

A process‐based model for colluvial soil depth and shallow landsliding using digital elevation data

Dietrich

Reiss

Hsu

et al. 1995

Hydrological Processes

564

463

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

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“…This ability relies on the understanding of how mass and energy are transferred through watersheds and landscapes. Contributions on this topic have populated the geomorphologic and hydrologic literature for over a century (Gilbert and Dutton, 1880;Davis, 1892;Gilbert, 1909;Gilbert and Murphy, 1914;Strahler, 1952;Culling, 1960;Kirkby, A C C E P T E D M A N U S C R I P T…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 98%

Analyzing high resolution topography for advancing the understanding of mass and energy transfer through landscapes: A review

Passalacqua

Belmont

Staley

et al. 2015

Earth-Science Reviews

278

245

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International audienceThe study of mass and energy transfer across landscapes has recently evolved to comprehensive considerations acknowledging the role of biota and humans as geomorphic agents, as well as the importance of small-scale landscape features. A contributing and supporting factor to this evolution is the emergence over the last two decades of technologies able to acquire high resolution topography (HRT) (meter and sub-meter resolution) data. Landscape features can now be captured at an appropriately fine spatial resolution at which surface processes operate; this has revolutionized the way we study Earth-surface processes. The wealth of information contained in HRT also presents considerable challenges. For example, selection of the most appropriate type of HRT data for a given application is not trivial. No definitive approach exists for identifying and filtering erroneous or unwanted data, yet inappropriate filtering can create artifacts or eliminate/distort critical features. Estimates of errors and uncertainty are often poorly defined and typically fail to represent the spatial heterogeneity of the dataset, which may introduce bias or error for many analyses. For ease of use, gridded products are typically preferred rather than the more information-rich point cloud representations. Thus many users take advantage of only a fraction of the available data, which has furthermore been subjected to a series of operations often not known or investigated by the user. Lastly, standard HRT analysis work-flows are yet to be established for many popular HRT operations, which has contributed to the limited use of point cloud data.In this review, we identify key research questions relevant to the Earth-surface processes community within the theme of mass and energy transfer across landscapes and offer guidance on how to identify the most appropriate topographic data type for the analysis of interest. We describe the operations commonly performed from raw data to raster products and we identify key considerations and suggest appropriate work-flows for each, pointing to useful resources and available tools. Future research directions should stimulate further development of tools that take advantage of the wealth of information contained in the HRT data and address the present and upcoming research needs such as the ability to filter out unwanted data, compute spatially variable estimates of uncertainty and perform multi-scale analyses. While we focus primarily on HRT applications for mass and energy transfer, we envision this review to be relevant beyond the Earth-surface processes community for a much broader range of applications involving the analysis of HRT

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“…When sediment transport is by creep such that the transport flux is proportional to slope, * q s ¼ Àr s Krz; as proposed initially by Davis (1892) and Gilbert (1909), and assuming that soil thickness at any point is constant (i.e. qh=qt ¼ 0) then Eq.…”

Section: Soil Production Transport and Topographymentioning

confidence: 99%

Late Quaternary erosion in southeastern Australia: a field example using cosmogenic nuclides

Heimsath

Chappell

Dietrich

et al. 2001

Quaternary International

174

180

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Late Quaternary rates of apparent soil production, bedrock incision, and average erosion are determined for the southeastern highlands of Australia using in situ produced cosmogenic nuclide concentrations of 10 Be and 26 Al. Apparent soil production rates define a steep, inverse exponential function of soil depth with a maximum of 143 m Ma À1 under zero soil depth. There were no observed soil depths between about 25 cm and zero, however, such that the maximum observed rate is about 50 m Ma À1. The Bredbo River catchment average erosion rate is 1571 m Ma À1 , and is similar to the average hillslope erosion rate of 1671 m Ma À1 . Bedrock incision rates average 9 m Ma À1 and suggest that the higher rates of hillslope erosion may be in response to a pulse of incision, perhaps generated by knickpoint propagation. Bedrock erosion rates inferred from a tor profile average 3.8 m Ma À1 , with higher rates on other, more weathered tor tops. An aboveground tor profile of nuclide concentrations is consistent with a simple model of rapid stripping of the surrounding saprolite, supporting the view that at least one episodic period of increased denudation has affected the landscape evolution of the highlands. We test this hypothesis by using a simple landscape evolution model to reasonably predict the spatial variation of soil depth as well as the emergence of tors. r

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The Convex Profile of Bad-Land Divides

Cited by 88 publications

References 0 publications

A process‐based model for colluvial soil depth and shallow landsliding using digital elevation data

A process‐based model for colluvial soil depth and shallow landsliding using digital elevation data

Analyzing high resolution topography for advancing the understanding of mass and energy transfer through landscapes: A review

Late Quaternary erosion in southeastern Australia: a field example using cosmogenic nuclides

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