hydrologic controls on aperiodic spatial organization of the ridge–slough patterned landscape

Clicks: 138
ID: 241478
2016
Free PDF
Article Quality & Performance Metrics
Overall Quality
Not rated
Combines reader engagement with the AI quality analysis. This article has not been analysed, so there is no overall score — reader engagement is measured and shown alongside.
AI Quality Assessment
Not analyzed
Readership in this journal
Emerging

Ranked #234 of 303 articles by views in materials research bulletin

Most read Least read

Bar heights use a square-root scale. Only the 120 most-read articles are drawn; the journal has 303 in total.

Mint this article as an NFT
Not yet minted

Create a permanent, verifiable on-chain record of this article on the Scimatic Network. The NFT is held in your Journament account, and you can withdraw it to your own wallet at any time.

5 SUSD one-off · no wallet required
Sign in to mint
Abstract
A century of hydrologic modification has altered the physical and biological drivers of landscape processes in the Everglades (Florida, USA). Restoring the ridge–slough patterned landscape, a dominant feature of the historical system, is a priority but requires an understanding of pattern genesis and degradation mechanisms. Physical experiments to evaluate alternative pattern formation mechanisms are limited by the long timescales of peat accumulation and loss, necessitating model-based comparisons, where support for a particular mechanism is based on model replication of extant patterning and trajectories of degradation. However, multiple mechanisms yield a central feature of ridge–slough patterning (patch elongation in the direction of historical flow), limiting the utility of that characteristic for discriminating among alternatives. Using data from vegetation maps, we investigated the statistical features of ridge–slough spatial patterning (ridge density, patch perimeter, elongation, patch size distributions, and spatial periodicity) to establish more rigorous criteria for evaluating model performance and to inform controls on pattern variation across the contemporary system. Mean water depth explained significant variation in ridge density, total perimeter, and length : width ratios, illustrating an important pattern response to existing hydrologic gradients. Two independent analyses (2-D periodograms and patch size distributions) provide strong evidence against regular patterning, with the landscape exhibiting neither a characteristic wavelength nor a characteristic patch size, both of which are expected under conditions that produce regular patterns. Rather, landscape properties suggest robust scale-free patterning, indicating genesis from the coupled effects of local facilitation and a global negative feedback operating uniformly at the landscape scale. Critically, this challenges widespread invocation of scale-dependent negative feedbacks for explaining ridge–slough pattern origins. These results help discern among genesis mechanisms and provide an improved statistical description of the landscape that can be used to compare among model outputs, as well as to assess the success of future restoration projects.
Reference Key
casey2016hydrologyhydrologic Use this key to autocite in the manuscript while using SciMatic Manuscript Manager or Thesis Manager
Authors S. T. Casey, M. J. Cohen, S. Acharya, D. A. Kaplan, J. W. Jawitz
Are you one of these authors? Claim your profile
Journal materials research bulletin
Year 2016
DOI
10.5194/hess-20-4457-2016
URL
https://www.hydrol-earth-syst-sci.net/20/4457/2016/hess-20-4457-2016.pdf
Keywords
anthropology recreationenvironmental sciences sanitary engineeringgeography technologyenvironmental technology

Citations

No citations found. To add a citation, contact the admin at info@scimatic.org

Comments

No comments yet. Be the first to comment on this article.