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The relationship between drainage density, erosion rate, and hilltop curvature: Implications for sediment transport processes

Clubb, Fiona J.; Mudd, Simon M.; Attal, Mikaël; Milodowski, David T.; Grieve, Stuart W.D.

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Authors

Simon M. Mudd

Mikaël Attal

David T. Milodowski

Stuart W.D. Grieve



Abstract

Drainage density is a fundamental landscape metric describing the extent of the fluvial network. We compare the relationship between drainage density (Dd) and erosion rate (E) using the Channel‐Hillslope Integrated Landscape Development (CHILD) numerical model. We find that varying the channel slope exponent (n) in detachment‐limited fluvial incision models controls the relationship between Dd and E, with n > 1 resulting in increasing Dd with E if all other parameters are held constant. This result is consistent when modeling both linear and nonlinear hillslope sediment flux. We also test the relationship between Dd and E in five soil‐mantled landscapes throughout the USA: Feather River, CA; San Gabriel Mountains, CA; Boulder Creek, CO; Guadalupe Mountains, NM; and Bitterroot National Forest, ID. For two of these field sites we compare Dd to cosmogenic radionuclide (CRN)‐derived erosion rates, and for each site we use mean hilltop curvature as a proxy for erosion rate where CRN‐derived erosion rates are not available. We find that there is a significant positive relationship between Dd, E, and hilltop curvature across every site, with the exception of the San Gabriel Mountains, CA. This relationship is consistent with an n exponent greater than 1, suggesting that at higher erosion rates, the transition between advective and diffusive processes occurs at smaller contributing areas in soil‐mantled landscapes.

Citation

Clubb, F. J., Mudd, S. M., Attal, M., Milodowski, D. T., & Grieve, S. W. (2016). The relationship between drainage density, erosion rate, and hilltop curvature: Implications for sediment transport processes. Journal of Geophysical Research: Earth Surface, 121(10), 1724-1745. https://doi.org/10.1002/2015jf003747

Journal Article Type Article
Acceptance Date Jul 28, 2016
Online Publication Date Oct 1, 2016
Publication Date Oct 31, 2016
Deposit Date Jul 3, 2019
Publicly Available Date Mar 29, 2024
Journal Journal of geophysical research. Earth surface.
Print ISSN 2169-9003
Publisher American Geophysical Union
Peer Reviewed Peer Reviewed
Volume 121
Issue 10
Pages 1724-1745
DOI https://doi.org/10.1002/2015jf003747
Related Public URLs https://www.research.ed.ac.uk/portal/en/publications/the-relationship-between-drainage-density-erosion-rate-and-hilltop-curvature-implications-for-sediment-transport-processes(2dedfa0f-afac-4788-b3e1-6adae3082dd5).html

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Publisher Licence URL
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Copyright Statement
© 2016. The Authors. This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.





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