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84-5 Hack’s Law-like Scaling Relations in the Channel Network of River Deltas
Session: Riverscapes in transition: Advances in fluvial geomorphology, sediment transport, deposition, river health, and urban rivers (Part II)
Presenting Author:
Tian Dong
Authors:
Dong, Tian Yang1, Vulis, Lawrence2, Ma, Hongbo3, Tejedor, Alejandro4, Goudge, Timothy Andrew5r>
(1) School of Earth, Environmental, and Marine Sciences, University of Texas Rio Grande Valey, Edinburg, TX, USA, (2) Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of California, Irvine, Irvine, CA, USA, (3) Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, IL, USA, (4) Institute for Biocomputation and Physics of Complex Systems, University of Zaragoza, Zaragoza, Spain; Department of Theoretical Physics, University of Zaragoza, Zaragoza, Spain, (5) Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences, University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX, USA,
Abstract:
River deltas create and sustain land by channeling water and sediment through branched networks. However, how the arrangement of distributary channels relates to the area of land they build remains not well understood. Drawing inspiration from Hack’s law in tributary systems, we explore whether a similar link exists between the length of distributary channels and the land area they support, known as the nourishment area, which acts as the land-building equivalent of the drainage area. Analyzing a global dataset of these networks reveals that channel length and nourishment area follow a scaling pattern very similar to tributary systems. Nonetheless, two different local behaviors are observed: Uniform Delta Networks maintain a consistent Hack-like relationship across scales, while Composite Delta Networks show a scale break, shifting from space-filling near the delta's source to nearly linear growth toward the coast. These patterns indicate that similar overall scaling can originate from various local growth processes and spatial organizations. In summary, the findings demonstrate that deltaic land formation exhibits both global regularity and local variability in its organization.