Hayakawa et al 2010, Fall AGU poster

Channel initiation and landsliding: objective mapping on lidar DTMs in Japan

Hayakawa, Y. S.; Stark, C. P.; Passalacqua, P.; Oguchi, T.

American Geophysical Union, Fall Meeting 2010, abstract #EP21A-0742

The advent of meter-resolution lidar DTMs and objective feature mapping algorithms have meant that channel heads can be identified from topographic data alone. As a result, curvature-slope-area properties can now be measured at channel heads rather than having to be assumed a priori in order to delineate the channel skeleton on the DTM, thus providing an opportunity to study in greater depth the processes governing channel head initiation. We explore this opportunity in a GeoNet analysis of lidar DTMs for several upland catchments in Japan. We find a strong dependence of channel head density (and similarly of drainage density) on the spatiotemporal pattern of landsliding, and we discuss observations of slope-area relations in this context.