River slope connects modern topography with ancient tectonics

Scientists believe that topographic features are shaped by the tectonic history of the surrounding environment. However, although models exist that relate a known tectonic history to the expected shape of the rivers, the opposite problem of finding the tectonic history that resulted in an observed river‐dominated landscape remains challenging. Past researchers have used smoothing of topographic data to find averages of tectonic information or have attempted many different tectonic histories and compared their expected output against the real topography. Now, Goren et al. have expanded on these methods with two new models.