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Effects of climate on fluvial discharge and key controls of fluvial fans: a quantitative study, The
Hansford, Mark R.
Hansford, Mark R.
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2020
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Abstract
Rivers have long been characterized by their average discharge and assumed to be sediment bypass conduits carrying sediment to its final depositional sinks. This dissertation combines daily discharge data from river gauging stations with satellite imagery to betterunderstand both river discharge and fluvial fans. We examine at fluvial discharge in the context of different hydroclimates. The importance of the role of discharge variability is increasingly being recognized and this work shines a quantitative light on the climatic controls of river discharge and identifies linkages between discharge and fluvial fan formation scaling relationships.Through these investigations, we 1) develop a new set of dimensionless metrics to quantify discharge variability, 2) identify how river discharge variability falls into four statistically different and predictable groups that are characterized by flood magnitude, hydrograph shape, and inter-annual variability in discharge and are controlled by climate, 3) demonstrate that 75% of modern fluvial fans have fan-forming rivers with high discharge variability, and 4) characterize important geomorphometric scaling relationships in fluvial fans between discharge, channel width, and fan size.These findings have implications for both terrestrial and extraterrestrial landscape evolution, paleoclimate modeling, and flood prediction and mitigation. Furthermore, the quantitative identification of scaling relationships intrinsic to fluvial fans should provide useful for hydrocarbon exploration and production.
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