Get 20M+ Full-Text Papers For Less Than $1.50/day. Start a 14-Day Trial for You or Your Team.

Learn More →

Power law distributions of discharge mass and energy in river basins

Power law distributions of discharge mass and energy in river basins River networks constitute dissipative systems with many spatial degrees of freedom. Previous work by Mandelbrot (1983) and Bak et al. (1987, 1988, 1990) suggests that such systems will follow power law distributions in their mass and energy characteristics. It is shown that this is the case for river networks where the exponent β in the distribution, P(X > x) ∝ x−β, is approximately equal to 0.45 and 0.90 for discharge and energy respectively in the case of several networks analyzed in North America when these variables are calculated for each individual link throughout the drainage network. An explanation of the values of β is offered based on the fractal structure of rivers and on principles of energy expenditure in river basins. http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png Water Resources Research Wiley

Power law distributions of discharge mass and energy in river basins

Loading next page...
 
/lp/wiley/power-law-distributions-of-discharge-mass-and-energy-in-river-basins-3Li48WrdHG

References (24)

Publisher
Wiley
Copyright
Copyright © 1992 by the American Geophysical Union.
ISSN
0043-1397
eISSN
1944-7973
DOI
10.1029/91WR03033
Publisher site
See Article on Publisher Site

Abstract

River networks constitute dissipative systems with many spatial degrees of freedom. Previous work by Mandelbrot (1983) and Bak et al. (1987, 1988, 1990) suggests that such systems will follow power law distributions in their mass and energy characteristics. It is shown that this is the case for river networks where the exponent β in the distribution, P(X > x) ∝ x−β, is approximately equal to 0.45 and 0.90 for discharge and energy respectively in the case of several networks analyzed in North America when these variables are calculated for each individual link throughout the drainage network. An explanation of the values of β is offered based on the fractal structure of rivers and on principles of energy expenditure in river basins.

Journal

Water Resources ResearchWiley

Published: Apr 1, 1992

There are no references for this article.