Decoding the Morphological Differences between Himalayan Glacial and Fluvial Landscapes Using Multifractal Analysis

Srimonti Dutta

doi:10.1038/s41598-017-11669-0

Abstract

Himalayas is the home to nearly 10,000 glaciers which are mostly located at high and inaccessible region. Digital Elevation Model (DEM) can be effective in the study of these glaciers. This paper aims at providing an automated distinction of glacial and fluvial morphologies using multifractal technique. We have studied the variation of elevation profile of Glacial and Fluvial landscapes using Multifractal Detrended Fluctuation Analysis (MFDFA). Glacial landscapes reveal more complex structure compared to the fluvial landscapes as indicated by fractal parameters degree of multifractality, asymmetry index.

Highlights

Though there have been numerous monofractal approaches to the study of the fractal properties of geomorphologies, recent studies have shown that a multifractal approach is more relevant as fractal parameters may vary depending on the locations[18,19,20,21,22,23,24]
Multifractal Detrended Fluctuation Analysis (MFDFA) is a generalization of the DFA (Detrended Fluctuation Analysis) methodology introduced by Peng et al.[36]
The study of multifractal properties of glacial and fluvial landscapes has revealed the following interesting features: (i) Both glacial and fluvial landscapes depict complex multifractal structure, which may be attributed to long range correlations

Summary

Introduction

Though there have been numerous monofractal approaches to the study of the fractal properties of geomorphologies, recent studies have shown that a multifractal approach is more relevant as fractal parameters may vary depending on the locations[18,19,20,21,22,23,24]. MFDFA is considered to be an important tool for extracting the multifractal properties of fluctuation pattern and has been successfully applied to diverse fields such as heart rate dynamics, human gait, earthquake signals, and economic time series. We have chosen the glacial valley around Bara Shigri Glacier as the glacial landscape and the Beas Basin around Manali as the fluvial landscape. Digital Elevation Model (DEM) analysis can be valuable in studying those glaciers. We analyze the topographic data from two distinct regions of the Western Himalaya where (A) Fluvial and (B) Glacial processes controls the landscape evolution (see location map, Fig. 1(a)). The source of the topographic data is a 1 arc second Digital Elevation Model (DEM) derived from shuttle radar topographic mission (SRTM1)[35]. Using SRTM1 the latitude(y), longitude(x) and elevation (z) at each point of glacial and fluvial landscapes were extracted. Multifractal detrended fluctuation analysis was applied on each set to reveal the multifractal properties of the elevation profile

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Conclusion