The direction of landscape erosion

Stark, Colin P.; Stark, Gavin J.

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/esurf-10-383-2022

Articles | Volume 10, issue 3

https://doi.org/10.5194/esurf-10-383-2022

© Author(s) 2022. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

https://doi.org/10.5194/esurf-10-383-2022

© Author(s) 2022. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Articles | Volume 10, issue 3

Research article

|

03 May 2022

Research article |

| 03 May 2022

The direction of landscape erosion

Colin P. Stark and Gavin J. Stark

Model code and software

The Geometric Mechanics of Erosion (GME) Colin P. Stark https://geomorphysics.github.io/GME/index.html

The Geometric Mechanics of Erosion (GME) Colin P. Stark https://zenodo.org/badge/latestdoi/386205725

Geomorphysics Python Library (GMPLib) Colin P. Stark https://geomorphysics.github.io/GMPLib/

Geomorphysics Python Library (GMPLib) Colin P. Stark https://zenodo.org/badge/latestdoi/386201544

Short summary

Landscape erosion is generally considered to take place vertically downward. Here, by writing gradient-driven erosion in Hamiltonian form, we show this is not true. Instead, we find it takes place in two directions simultaneously: (i) normal to the surface and (ii) along rays pointing upstream and either up or down depending on how erosion rate scales with slope. The rays follow the shortest time paths that determine how long it takes for a landscape to respond to changes in external conditions.