2 research outputs found
A universal approach for drainage basins
Drainage basins are essential to Geohydrology and Biodiversity. Defining
those regions in a simple, robust and efficient way is a constant challenge in
Earth Science. Here, we introduce a model to delineate multiple drainage basins
through an extension of the Invasion Percolation-Based Algorithm (IPBA). In
order to prove the potential of our approach, we apply it to real and
artificial datasets. We observe that the perimeter and area distributions of
basins and anti-basins display long tails extending over several orders of
magnitude and following approximately power-law behaviors. Moreover, the
exponents of these power laws depend on spatial correlations and are invariant
under the landscape orientation, not only for terrestrial, but lunar and
martian landscapes. The terrestrial and martian results are statistically
identical, which suggests that a hypothetical martian river would present
similarity to the terrestrial rivers. Finally, we propose a theoretical value
for the Hack's exponent based on the fractal dimension of watersheds,
. We measure for Earth, which is close to
our estimation of . Our study suggests that Hack's law can
have its origin purely in the maximum and minimum lines of the landscapes.Comment: 20 pages, 6 Figures, and 1 Tabl