TY - JOUR
T1 - Increased asymmetry of pit-over-peak statistics with landscape smoothing
AU - Anand, Shashank Kumar
AU - Porporato, Amilcare
N1 - Funding Information:
The authors thank Milad Hooshyar for useful discussions in the early stage of the research. The authors acknowledge support from the US National Science Foundation (NSF) grants EAR‐1331846 and EAR‐1338694, Innovation Award—Moore Science‐to‐Action Fund, and BP through the Carbon Mitigation Initiative (CMI) at Princeton University. The authors also acknowledge support from the High Meadows Environmental Institute (HMEI). S. K. Anand also acknowledges the support by HMEI through the Mary and Randall Hack '69 Research Fund.
Funding Information:
The authors thank Milad Hooshyar for useful discussions in the early stage of the research. The authors acknowledge support from the US National Science Foundation (NSF) grants EAR-1331846 and EAR-1338694, Innovation Award?Moore Science-to-Action Fund, and BP through the Carbon Mitigation Initiative (CMI) at Princeton University. The authors also acknowledge support from the High Meadows Environmental Institute (HMEI). S.?K. Anand also acknowledges the support by HMEI through the Mary and Randall Hack '69 Research Fund. The authors are pleased to acknowledge that the statistical analysis presented in this article was performed on computational resources managed and supported by Princeton Research Computing, a consortium of groups including the Princeton Institute for Computational Science and Engineering (PICSciE) and the Office of Information Technology's High Performance Computing Center and Visualization Laboratory at Princeton University.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2021 John Wiley & Sons Ltd.
PY - 2022/1
Y1 - 2022/1
N2 - The local extremes (i.e., peaks and pits) of the landscape-elevation field play a critical role in the energy, water, and nutrient distribution of a region, but their statistical distributions in relation to landscape evolution have received limited research attention. In this work, we first explain how the spatial correlation structure of the elevation field affects the counts and frequency distributions of local extremes. We then analyze local extremes statistics for eight mountainous landscapes worldwide with diverse hydroclimatic forcings and geologic histories using 24 digital elevation models and compare them with complex terrain of the Erythraeum Chaos region on Mars. The results reveal that the spherical covariance structure captures the observed spatial correlation in these cases, with the peak frequency distribution agreeing well with the elevation frequency distribution. The ratio of the pit-over-peak (POP) count is linked to the degree to which the pit and peak frequency distributions match, and carries the mark of landscape aging. The relationship between the geomorphic development stage (quantified by the reduced fatness of the slope-distribution tail) and the deviation of POP values from unity in old mountainous landscapes confirms that the evolution towards smoother topographies is atypically accompanied by reduced pit counts distinctive of organized valley and ridge patterns.
AB - The local extremes (i.e., peaks and pits) of the landscape-elevation field play a critical role in the energy, water, and nutrient distribution of a region, but their statistical distributions in relation to landscape evolution have received limited research attention. In this work, we first explain how the spatial correlation structure of the elevation field affects the counts and frequency distributions of local extremes. We then analyze local extremes statistics for eight mountainous landscapes worldwide with diverse hydroclimatic forcings and geologic histories using 24 digital elevation models and compare them with complex terrain of the Erythraeum Chaos region on Mars. The results reveal that the spherical covariance structure captures the observed spatial correlation in these cases, with the peak frequency distribution agreeing well with the elevation frequency distribution. The ratio of the pit-over-peak (POP) count is linked to the degree to which the pit and peak frequency distributions match, and carries the mark of landscape aging. The relationship between the geomorphic development stage (quantified by the reduced fatness of the slope-distribution tail) and the deviation of POP values from unity in old mountainous landscapes confirms that the evolution towards smoother topographies is atypically accompanied by reduced pit counts distinctive of organized valley and ridge patterns.
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85119059811&partnerID=8YFLogxK
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/citedby.url?scp=85119059811&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1002/esp.5248
DO - 10.1002/esp.5248
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85119059811
SN - 0197-9337
VL - 47
SP - 298
EP - 307
JO - Earth Surface Processes and Landforms
JF - Earth Surface Processes and Landforms
IS - 1
ER -