https://doi.org/10.1140/epjp/s13360-022-02824-2
Regular Article
Scaling behaviour of braided active channels: a Taylor’s power law approach
1
Department of Engineering for Innovation, University of Salento, Lecce, Italy
2
EUropean Maritime Environmental Research (EUMER), University of Salento, Lecce, Italy
3
Department of Informatics, Modeling, Electronics and Systems Engineering, DIMES, University of Calabria, Rende, CS, Italy
4
Department of Civil Engineering, DICI, University of Calabria, Rende, CS, Italy
5
Dipartimento di Matematica e Fisica “Ennio De Giorgi”, University of Salento, Lecce, Italy
6
Sezione INFN, Lecce, Italy
7
Department of Agricultural Sciences, University of Naples Federico II, Naples, Italy
Received:
15
March
2022
Accepted:
12
May
2022
Published online:
24
May
2022
At a channel (reach) scale, braided channels are fluvial, geomorphological, complex systems that are characterized by a shift of bars during flood events. In such events water flows are channeled in multiple and mobile channels across a gravel floodplain that remain in unmodified conditions. From a geometrical point of view, braided patterns of the active hydraulic channels are characterized by multicursal nature with structures that are spatially developed by either simple- and multi-scaling behavior. Since current studies do not take into account a general procedure concerning scale measurements, the latter behavior is still not well understood. The aim of our investigation is to analyze directly, through a general procedure, the scaling behavior of hydraulically active channels per transect and per reach analyzed. Our generalized stochastic approach is based on Taylor’s law, and the theory of exponential dispersion distributions. In particular, we make use of a power law, based on the variance and mean of the active channel fluctuations. In this way we demonstrate that the number of such fluctuations with respect to the unicursal behavior of the braided rivers, follows a jump-process of Poisson and compound Poisson–Gamma distributions. Furthermore, a correlation is also provided between the scaling fractal exponents obtained by Taylor’s law and the Hurst exponents.
© The Author(s) 2022. corrected publication 2022
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