Path selection in the growth of rivers
Name
Cohen-2015-Path selection in th.pdf
Size
2.2 MB
Format
Adobe PDF
Checksum (MD5)
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Author(s)
Devauchelle, Olivier
Szymczak, Piotr
Cohen, Yosef
Seybold, Hansjorg
Yi, Robert Sngho
Rothman, Daniel H.
Date Issued
November 2015
Journal
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America
Publisher
National Academy of Sciences (U.S.)
Citation
Cohen, Yossi et al. “Path Selection in the Growth of Rivers.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 112.46 (2015): 14132–14137. © 2015 National Academy of Sciences
Version
Final published version
Abstract
River networks exhibit a complex ramified structure that has inspired decades of studies. However, an understanding of the propagation of a single stream remains elusive. Here we invoke a criterion for path selection from fracture mechanics and apply it to the growth of streams in a diffusion field. We show that, as it cuts through the landscape, a stream maintains a symmetric groundwater flow around its tip. The local flow conditions therefore determine the growth of the drainage network. We use this principle to reconstruct the history of a network and to find a growth law associated with it. Our results show that the deterministic growth of a single channel based on its local environment can be used to characterize the structure of river networks.
MIT Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Chemical Engineering
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences
Lorenz Center (Massachusetts Institute of Technology)
Terms of Use
Article is made available in accordance with the publisher's policy and may be subject to US copyright law. Please refer to the publisher's site for terms of use.
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DOI of Published Version
https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1413883112
