HR: 1340h
AN: H53C-1284    [Abstracts]
TI: Scaling of Braided River Depths
AU: * Tilman, E
EM: tilm0001@umn.edu
AF: University of Minnesota, St. Anthony Falls Laboratory 2 - 3rd Avenue SE, Minneapolis, MN 55414 United States
AU: Foufoula-Georgiou, E
AF: University of Minnesota, St. Anthony Falls Laboratory 2 - 3rd Avenue SE, Minneapolis, MN 55414 United States
AU: Arneodo, A
AF: Ecole Normale Superieure de Lyon, 46 allee d'Italie 69364, Lyon, cedex 07 France
AU: Tal, M
AF: University of Minnesota, St. Anthony Falls Laboratory 2 - 3rd Avenue SE, Minneapolis, MN 55414 United States
AU: Paola, C
AF: University of Minnesota, St. Anthony Falls Laboratory 2 - 3rd Avenue SE, Minneapolis, MN 55414 United States
AB: Braided rivers are dynamic systems of interweaving channels. The properties of these systems are difficult to study in the field and system evolution is difficult to predict. Knowledge of scaling relationships present in these rivers would assist in model testing as well as statistical prediction of channel evolution. In our previous work, scaling relationships have been quantified for braided channel system morphology and evolution and inferences on how the density of channels changes with scale and on the magnitude and frequency of channel shifts have been made. In this work, we study the scaling of hydrological characteristics of braided rivers by analyzing cross-sections from an experimental braided river using global and local multifractal analysis methods. Analysis has been performed separately on depth fluctuations that come from within and outside the braided river system channels and differences in their scaling characteristics have been quantified. The effect of combining the within and outside channel depth fluctuations into a single multifractal analysis has been shown to manifest itself into a \"phase transition\" phenomenon i.e., a cross-over region in the log-log plot of moments of depth increments versus scale, which depends on the order of the moment.
DE: 1824 Geomorphology (1625)
DE: 1848 Networks
DE: 1869 Stochastic processes
SC: Hydrology [H]
MN: 2004 AGU Fall Meeting