|
Editor's Highlight
Read Full Article (file size: 192296 bytes) Cited by
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).
Read Full Article (file size: 192296 bytes) Cited by
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.
Copyright 2007 by the American Geophysical Union.
|