ISSN:
1436-3259
Keywords:
Key words: wetland, elevation, scaling, stochastic, multifractal, intermittency.
Source:
Springer Online Journal Archives 1860-2000
Topics:
Architecture, Civil Engineering, Surveying
,
Energy, Environment Protection, Nuclear Power Engineering
,
Geography
,
Geosciences
Notes:
Abstract. The land surface elevation distribution will serve as fundamental input data to any wetland flow model. As an alternative to the traditional smooth function approach to represent or interpolate elevation data, we explore the use of Levy monofractals and universal multifractals as a means for defining a statistically equivalent topography. The motivation behind this effort is that fractals, like natural topography, are irregular, they offer a way to relate elevation variations measured at different scales, and the relationships are of a statistical nature. The study site was a riparian wetland near Savannah, GA, that contained beavers, and a total of four elevation transects were examined. The elevation increments showed definite non-Gaussian behavior, with parameter values, such as the Hurst coefficient and Lévy index (α), depending on the question of presence of beaver activity. It was obvious that the data were highly irregular, especially the transects influenced by beavers. Significantly different α values were obtained depending on whether the entire data set or just the tails were examined, which demonstrated inability of the monofractal model to reflect fully the irregularity of wetland data. Further analysis confirmed definite multifractal scaling, and it is concluded that the multifractal model is superior for this data set. Universal multifractal parameters are calculated and compared to those obtained previously for more typical terrain. Although it is difficult to consider a unique universal multifractal parameter α for the entire wetland, multifractal-like scaling was evident in each transect as reflected by the nonlinear behaviors of the scaling functions. We demonstrate a good agreement between theory and measurements up to a critical order of statistical moments, q D , close to 3.5 and obtain realistic unconditioned simulations of multifractal wetland topography based on our parameter estimates. Future work should be devoted to conditioning multifractal realizations to data and to obtaining larger data sets so that the question of anisotropy may be studied.
Type of Medium:
Electronic Resource
URL:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s004770050002
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