How does the downstream boundary affect avulsion dynamics in a laboratory bifurcation?

Salter, Gerard; Voller, Vaughan R.; Paola, Chris

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/esurf-7-911-2019

Articles | Volume 7, issue 4

https://doi.org/10.5194/esurf-7-911-2019

© Author(s) 2019. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

https://doi.org/10.5194/esurf-7-911-2019

© Author(s) 2019. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Articles | Volume 7, issue 4

Research article

|

01 Oct 2019

Research article |

| 01 Oct 2019

How does the downstream boundary affect avulsion dynamics in a laboratory bifurcation?

Gerard Salter, Vaughan R. Voller, and Chris Paola

Download

Final revised paper (published on 01 Oct 2019)
Supplement to the final revised paper
Preprint (discussion started on 05 Jun 2019)
Supplement to the preprint

Interactive discussion

Status: closed

AC: Author comment | RC: Referee comment | SC: Short comment | EC: Editor comment

- Printer-friendly version

- Supplement

RC1: 'review of Salter et al.', Anonymous Referee #1, 09 Jul 2019
RC2: 'Review of Salter et al.', Anonymous Referee #2, 12 Jul 2019
AC1: 'Response to reviewers', Gerard Salter, 09 Aug 2019

Peer-review completion

AR: Author's response | RR: Referee report | ED: Editor decision

AR by Gerard Salter on behalf of the Authors (09 Aug 2019) Author's response Manuscript

ED: Publish as is (27 Aug 2019) by Paola Passalacqua

ED: Publish as is (04 Sep 2019) by Niels Hovius (Editor)

AR by Gerard Salter on behalf of the Authors (05 Sep 2019) Author's response Manuscript

Short summary

Bifurcations are the switches that steer water and sediment in delta and multithread river networks, playing an important role in shaping the landscape. In lab experiments, we found that when the downstream branches grow through time, frequent switching in the water and sediment partitioning occurs. In contrast, once sediment freely exits the downstream boundary, long periods of time when one branch dominates occur; however, unlike our theoretical prediction, these are not permanent.