No abstract

The drainage density (Dd) is an important index to show fluvial geomorphology. The study on Dd is helpful to understand the evolution of the whole hydrological and geomorphic process. Based on the Shuttle Radar Topography Mission 90-m digital elevation model, the drainage network of basins along the eastern margin of the Qinghai–Tibet Plateau is extracted using a terrain morphology-based method in ArcGIS 10.3, and Dd is calculated. The spatial characteristics of Dd are analyzed, and the relationship between Dd and its influencing factors, e.g., the topography, precipitation, and vegetation coverage, is explored. Our results show that terrains with a plan curvature ≥3 can represent the channels in the study area. Dd ranges from 2.5 to 0.1 km/km2, increases first, and then decreases from north to south on the eastern margin of the Qinghai–Tibet Plateau. Dd decreases with increasing average slope and average local relief. On the low-relief planation surfaces, Dd increases with increasing altitude, while on the rugged mountainous above planation surfaces, Dd decreases rapidly with increasing altitude. Dd first increased and then decreased with increasing mean annual precipitation (MAP) and normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI), and Dd reaches a maximum in the West Qinling Mountains with a semi-arid environment, indicating that Dd in different climatic regions of the eastern margin of the Qinghai–Tibet Plateau was mainly controlled by precipitation and vegetation.

Dam deformation monitoring data are generally characterized by non-smooth and no-saturated S-type fluctuation. The grey Verhulst model can get better results only when the data series is non-monotonic swing development and the saturated S-shaped sequence. Due to the limitations of the grey Verhulst model, the prediction accuracy will be limited to a certain extent. Aiming at the shortages in the prediction based on the traditional Verhulst model, the optimized grey Verhulst model is proposed to improve the prediction accuracy of the dam deformation monitoring. Compared with those of the traditional GM (1,1) model, the DGM (2,1) model, and the traditional Verhulst (1,1) model, the experimental results show that the new proposed optimized Verhulst model has higher prediction accuracy than the traditional gray model. This study offers an effective model for dealing with the non-saturated fluctuation sequence to predict dam deformation under uncertain conditions.