Bedrock river profiles are often interpreted with the aid of slope–area analysis, but noisy topographic data make such interpretations challenging. We present an alternative approach based on an integration of the steady-state form of the stream power equation. The main component of this approach is a transformation of the horizontal coordinate that converts a steady-state river profile into a ...

Calculations are presented of the rate of energy conversion of the barotropic tide into internal gravity waves above topography on the ocean floor. The ocean is treated as infinitely deep, and the topography consists of periodic obstructions; a Green function method is used to construct the scattered wavefield. The calculations extend the previous results of Balmforth et al. for subcritical top...

Many topographic characteristics of the landscape (e.g. relief, slope, aspect, gradient, slope curvature, slope length and contour curvature) play important roles in the distribution of vegetation and biodiversity (e.g. Merriam, 1890, 1894; Whittaker & Niering, 1965, 1968; Vuilleumier, 1970; Brown, 1971, 1978; Hastings et al., 1972; Simpson, 1975; Hanawalt & Whittaker, 1976; Whittaker, 1977; Be...

Plot data from the USFS FIA program could be combined with terrain variables to attempt to explain how terrain characteristics influence forest growth, species composition, productivity, fire behavior, wildlife habitat, and other phenomena. While some types of analyses using FIA data have been shown to be insensitive to precision of plot locations, it has been suggested that terrain-based model...

Topographic asymmetry, that is, differences in the morphology of landscapes as a function of slope aspect, can be used to infer ecohydrogeomorphic feedback relationships. In this study, we document the dependence of topographic gradients and drainage densities on slope aspect and time/age in four Quaternary cinder cone fields in Arizona, Oregon, and California. Cinder cones are particularly use...

We use numerical simulations to investigate excitation of topographic vorticity waves (TVWs) along the Antarctic continental slope by outflows of dense shelf water through troughs. Idealized models show that wave frequency depends on the amount of stretching in the ambient fluid over the outflow and on background along-slope mean flow. Frequency is higher for steeper bottom slope, larger outflo...

The effects of land cover and surface slope on lidar-derived elevation data were examined for a watershed in the piedmont of North Carolina. Lidar data were collected over the study area in a winter (leaf-off) overflight. Survey-grade elevation points (1,225) for six different land cover classes were used as reference points. Root mean squared error (RMSE) for land cover classes ranged from 14....

This report addresses the problem of extracting topographic features from Shuttle Radar Topography Mission (SRTM) imagery. The features are used for Earth science applications and include slope, curvature, aspect, flow direction, flow accumulation and compound topographic index (CTI). The objective of our work is (1) to support topographic feature extraction similar to the one in ArcGIS, (2) to...