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Morphometric dating of the fluvial landscape response to a tectonic perturbation
Author(s) -
Demoulin Alain
Publication year - 2012
Publication title -
geophysical research letters
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 2.007
H-Index - 273
eISSN - 1944-8007
pISSN - 0094-8276
DOI - 10.1029/2012gl052201
Subject(s) - denudation , landform , fluvial , geology , thermochronology , perturbation (astronomy) , tectonic uplift , physical geography , tectonics , geomorphology , paleontology , structural basin , geography , physics , quantum mechanics
Despite constant progress in numerical and field studies of landscape evolution, time evolution is still poorly constrained in many uplifted areas where low denudation rates prevent the use of low temperature thermochronology, especially outside high relief mountainous areas. Here, I show that regional statistics of the landscape metric R involving hypsometric integrals at three nested levels of a catchment are able to isolate the time effect on landscape geometry during the latter's transient response to a tectonic perturbation. Analysis of 210 catchments from 9 regions of known uplift age worldwide shows that the regionally characteristic, R ‐derived S R index is in inverse power law relation with the time elapsed since a base level lowering. Suggesting a response time of ∼5 My, this finding has important implications for quantifying the rate of landform evolution and determining whether a landscape has reached steady‐state form.