Fluvial features on Titan: Insights from morphology and modeling

Burr, D. M.; Perron, J. Taylor; Lamb, Michael P.; Irwin, R. P.; Collins, G. C.; Howard, A. D.; Sklar, L. S.; Moore, Jeffrey M.; Ádámkovics, Máté; Baker, Victor R.; Drummond, Sarah A.; Black, B. A.

doi:10.1130/b30612.1

Cited by 105 publications

(80 citation statements)

References 167 publications

(243 reference statements)

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…Thus, for fully turbulent and hydraulically rough flows, flow velocity is independent of the Reynolds number and fluid viscosity. This makes laboratory experiments using water flows also applicable to different gravities and rivers of more exotic fluids, such as brines on Mars (Lamb et al, 2012;Grotzinger et al, 2013) or methane rivers on Titan Burr et al, 2013), as long as they are also Reynolds-number independent. Most bedrock erosion experiments to date have been conducted in the turbulent regime (Fig.…”

Section: Accepted Manuscriptmentioning

confidence: 98%

“…To investigate the role of flaw size, Beyeler and Sklar (2010) measured crystal and clast size (D c ) in thin sections of disks eroded by Sklar and Dietrich (2001) and found that grain size, together with porosity (p), explained a large fraction of the scatter in the fit between erosion rate and tensile strength present There, where surface temperature is ~90 K, channels may be actively incising into Titan's waterice bedrock by flows of liquid methane carrying water-ice clasts as bedload (Collins, 2005;Perron et al, 2006;Burr et al, 2013). To extend rock erosion resistance scaling to ultracold ice, Litwin et al (2012) volumetric erosion rates of ultracold ice subjected to particle impacts and found that the impact energy required to erode a unit volume of ice was roughly equal to that measured by Sklar and Dietrich (2004) for natural rock of similar tensile strength.…”

Section: Accepted Manuscriptmentioning

confidence: 98%

See 1 more Smart Citation

New insights into the mechanics of fluvial bedrock erosion through flume experiments and theory

et al. 2015

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Please cite this article as: Lamb, Michael P., Finnegan, Noah J., Scheingross, Joel S., Sklar, Leonard S., New insights into the mechanics of fluvial bedrock erosion through flume experiments and theory, Geomorphology (2015), AbstractRiver incision into bedrock drives the topographic evolution of mountainous terrain and may link climate, tectonics, and topography over geologic time scales. Despite its importance, the mechanics of bedrock erosion are not well understood because channel form, river hydraulics, sediment transport, and erosion mechanics coevolve over relatively long time scales that prevent direct observations, and because erosive events occur intermittently and are difficult and dangerous to measure. Herein we synthesize how flume experiments using erodible bedrock simulants are filling these knowledge gaps by effectively accelerating the pace of landscape evolution under reduced scale in the laboratory. We also build on this work by providing new theory for rock resistance to abrasion, thresholds for plucking by vertical entrainment, sliding and toppling, and assessing bedrock-analog materials. Bedrock erosion experiments in the last 15 years reveal that the efficiency of rock abrasion scales inversely with the square of rock tensile strength, sediment supply has a dominant control over bed roughness and abrasion rates, suspended sediment is an efficient agent of erosion, and feedbacks with channel form and roughness strongly influence erosion rates. Erodibility comparisons across rock, concrete, ice, and foam indicate that, for a given tensile strength, abrasion rates are insensitive to elasticity.The few experiments that have been conducted on erosion by plucking highlight the importance of block protrusion height above the river bed, and the dominance of block sliding and toppling A C C E P T E D M A N U S C R I P T ACCEPTED MANUSCRIPT 2 at knickpoints. These observations are consistent with new theory for the threshold Shields stress to initiate plucking, which also suggests that erosion rates in sliding-and topplingdominated rivers are likely transported limited. Major knowledge gaps remain in the processes of erosion via plucking of bedrock blocks where joints are not river-bed parallel; waterfall erosion by toppling and plunge-pool erosion; feedbacks between weathering and physical erosion; erosional bedforms; and morphodynamic feedbacks between channel form and erosion rates. Despite scaling challenges, flume experiments continue to provide much needed tests of existing bedrock-erosion theory, force development of new theory, and yield insight into the mechanics of landscapes.

show abstract

Section: Accepted Manuscriptmentioning

confidence: 98%

Section: Accepted Manuscriptmentioning

confidence: 98%

New insights into the mechanics of fluvial bedrock erosion through flume experiments and theory

et al. 2015

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…This makes Titan and Earth the only worlds in the Solar System with stable liquids on their surfaces. On Titan's surface, channels and fluvial valley networks have been identified both by Cassini, as well as by the Huygens descent probe (Burr et al, 2013;Langhans et al, 2012;Jaumann et al, 2008). Cassini spacecraft instruments, including both the ISS and VIMS instruments, have observed storms and transient surface albedo changes resulting from precipitation Turtle et al, 2011Turtle et al, , 2009).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 97%

Dissolution of benzene, naphthalene, and biphenyl in a simulated Titan lake

Malaska

Hodyss

2014

Icarus

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

“…In this way, catchment power could help explain how topography mediates the linkage between climate and tectonics. Catchment power could also be used to compare numerical simulations of landscape evolution with real landscapes (Willgoose, 1994;Willgoose et al, 2003) and contrast terrestrial catchments with catchments on Mars or Titan, where the topography reflects differing gravitational accelerations, fluids, and rock properties (Mest et al, 2010;Burr et al, 2012).…”

Section: Future Research Opportunitiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Catchment power and the joint distribution of elevation and travel distance to the outlet

et al. 2016

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Abstract. The delivery of water, sediment, and solutes by catchments is influenced by the distribution of source elevations and their travel distances to the outlet. For example, elevation affects the magnitude and phase of precipitation, as well as the climatic factors that govern rock weathering, which influence the production rate and initial particle size of sediments. Travel distance, in turn, affects the timing of flood peaks at the outlet and the degree of sediment size reduction by wear, which affects particle size distributions at the outlet. The distributions of elevation and travel distance have been studied extensively but separately, as the hypsometric curve and width function. Yet a catchment can be considered as a collection of points, each with paired values of elevation and travel distance. For every point, the ratio of elevation to travel distance defines the mean slope for transport of mass to the outlet. Recognizing that mean slope is proportional to the average rate of loss of potential energy by water and sediment during transport to the outlet, we use the joint distribution of elevation and travel distance to define two new metrics for catchment geometry: "source-area power", and the corresponding catchmentwide integral "catchment power". We explore patterns in source-area and catchment power across three study catchments spanning a range of relief and drainage area. We then develop an empirical algorithm for generating synthetic source-area power distributions, which can be parameterized with data from natural catchments. This new way of quantifying the three-dimensional geometry of catchments can be used to explore the effects of topography on the distribution on fluxes of water, sediment, isotopes, and other landscape products passing through catchment outlets, and may provide a fresh perspective on problems of both practical and theoretical interest.

show abstract

Fluvial features on Titan: Insights from morphology and modeling

Cited by 105 publications

References 167 publications

New insights into the mechanics of fluvial bedrock erosion through flume experiments and theory

New insights into the mechanics of fluvial bedrock erosion through flume experiments and theory

Dissolution of benzene, naphthalene, and biphenyl in a simulated Titan lake

Catchment power and the joint distribution of elevation and travel distance to the outlet

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About