Non-linear hydrologic organization

Abstract

Abstract. We revisit three variants of the well-known Stommel diagrams that have been used to summarize knowledge of characteristic scales in time and space of some important hydrologic phenomena and modified these diagrams focusing on spatiotemporal scaling analyses of the underlying hydrologic processes. In the present paper we focus on soil formation, vegetation growth, and drainage network organization. We use existing scaling relationships for vegetation growth and soil formation, both of which refer to the same fundamental length and timescales defining flow rates at the pore scale but different powers of the power law relating time and space. The principle of a hierarchical organization of optimal subsurface flow paths could underlie both root lateral spread (RLS) of vegetation and drainage basin organization. To assess the applicability of scaling, and to extend the Stommel diagrams, data for soil depth, vegetation root lateral spread, and drainage basin length have been accessed. The new data considered here include timescales out to 150 Myr that correspond to depths of up to 240 m and horizontal length scales up to 6400 km and probe the limits of drainage basin development in time, depth, and horizontal extent.