Rivers as linear elements in landform evolution models

Hergarten, Stefan

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/esurf-8-367-2020

Articles | Volume 8, issue 2

https://doi.org/10.5194/esurf-8-367-2020

© Author(s) 2020. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

https://doi.org/10.5194/esurf-8-367-2020

© Author(s) 2020. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Articles | Volume 8, issue 2

Research article

|

26 May 2020

Research article |

| 26 May 2020

Rivers as linear elements in landform evolution models

Stefan Hergarten

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Final revised paper (published on 26 May 2020)
Preprint (discussion started on 17 Jan 2020)

Interactive discussion

Status: closed

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

- Printer-friendly version

- Supplement

RC1: 'Channel width', Taylor Perron, 21 Jan 2020
- AC1: 'Reply to the comment of Taylor Perron', Stefan Hergarten, 21 Jan 2020
RC2: 'Review of Hergarten (2020)', Anonymous Referee #2, 24 Feb 2020
- AC2: 'Reply', Stefan Hergarten, 29 Feb 2020
RC3: 'review', Anonymous Referee #3, 19 Mar 2020

Peer-review completion

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

AR by Stefan Hergarten on behalf of the Authors (06 Apr 2020) Author's response Manuscript

ED: Publish as is (23 Apr 2020) by Wolfgang Schwanghart

Dear Stefan Hergarten,

thank you for your response to the comments that reviewers raised in the discussion phase. ( I must say, I particularly like the two-column layout, which is very editor-friendly). I think that the reviewers raised some important points which you have carefully adressed in the revised version of your manuscript. The additional figures and numerical experiments make the paper and its results more accessible to readers. The same holds true for more detailed explanations in the text.

I have only a minor comment on figure 4 and the derivation of the "hillslope contributing area". First, you might want to adopt the wording of reviewer #3 who describes this area as the hillslope area that drains directly to a given channel and not through another channel pixel upstream. To my understanding, this best describes Ae.

In addition, the calculation of Ae is based on the D8 flow network and you mention in L275 that this representation for directions of hillslope process is questionable. In fact, I would even argue that it might be quite problematic because it will create very focussed locations along the river network that receive a lot of hillslope-derived material. May this cause numerical problems? A solution to this problem could be the adoption of a multiple flow direction algorithm for hillslopes and a D8 algorithm for rivers (TopoToolbox allows doing this using the function multi2single). Delivery of material from hillslopes to rivers may be less localized, but this remains to be tested.

However, I am not requesting this to be tested nor to be implemented. Rather, I think that the paper is an important contribution the modelling landscape evolution and should be published as is.

Best regards,
Wolfgang Schwanghart

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ED: Publish as is (23 Apr 2020) by Douglas Jerolmack (Editor)

AR by Stefan Hergarten on behalf of the Authors (28 Apr 2020) Manuscript

Short summary

Models of fluvial erosion have a long history in landform evolution modeling. Interactions between rivers and processes acting at hillslopes (e.g., landslides) are receiving growing interest in this context. While present-day computer capacities allow for applying such coupled models, there is still a scaling problem when considering rivers to be linear elements on a topography. Based on a reinterpretation of old empirical results, this study presents a new approach to overcome this problem.