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GEOPHYSICAL RESEARCH LETTERS, VOL. 34, L07402, doi:10.1029/2007GL029426, 2007

Fractal topography and subsurface water flows from fluvial bedforms to the continental shield

Anders Wörman

Department of Land and Water Resources Engineering, Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm, Sweden


Aaron I. Packman

Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois, USA


Lars Marklund

Department of Land and Water Resources Engineering, Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm, Sweden


Judson W. Harvey

U.S. Geological Survey, Reston, Virginia, USA


Susa H. Stone

Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois, USA


Abstract

Surface-subsurface flow interactions are critical to a wide range of geochemical and ecological processes and to the fate of contaminants in freshwater environments. Fractal scaling relationships have been found in distributions of both land surface topography and solute efflux from watersheds, but the linkage between those observations has not been realized. We show that the fractal nature of the land surface in fluvial and glacial systems produces fractal distributions of recharge, discharge, and associated subsurface flow patterns. Interfacial flux tends to be dominated by small-scale features while the flux through deeper subsurface flow paths tends to be controlled by larger-scale features. This scaling behavior holds at all scales, from small fluvial bedforms (tens of centimeters) to the continental landscape (hundreds of kilometers). The fractal nature of surface-subsurface water fluxes yields a single scale-independent distribution of subsurface water residence times for both near-surface fluvial systems and deeper hydrogeological flows.

Received 23 January 2007; accepted 1 March 2007; published 4 April 2007.

Keywords: fractal topography; fractal groundwater; Fourier spectrum.

Index Terms: 1622 Global Change: Earth system modeling (1225); 1805 Hydrology: Computational hydrology; 1829 Hydrology: Groundwater hydrology; 1839 Hydrology: Hydrologic scaling; 1630 Global Change: Impacts of global change (1225).

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Citation: Wörman, A., A. I. Packman, L. Marklund, J. W. Harvey, and S. H. Stone (2007), Fractal topography and subsurface water flows from fluvial bedforms to the continental shield, Geophys. Res. Lett., 34, L07402, doi:10.1029/2007GL029426.