Hierarchy structure characteristics analysis for the China Loess watersheds based on gully node calibration

Abstract

A land surface region can be decomposed into a series of watershed units with a hierarchical organizational structure. For loess landform, the watershed is a basic spatial–structural unit that can express natural landforms, surface morphology characteristics, spatial organization and developmental evolution. In this research we adopted the concept of node calibration in the watershed structure unit, selected six complete watersheds on China Loess Plateau as the research areas to study the quantitative characteristics of the hierarchical structure in terms of watershed geomorphology based on digital elevation model (DEM) data, and then built a watershed hierarchical structure model that relies on gully structure feature points. We calculated the quantitative indices, such as elevation, flow accumulation and hypsometric integral and found there are remarkably closer linear correlation between flow accumulation and elevation with increasing gully order, and the same variation tendency of hypsometric integral also presented. The results showed that the characteristics of spatial structure become more stable, and the intensity of spatial aggregation gradually enhances with increasing gully order. In summary, from the view of gully node calibration, the China Loess watershed structure shows more significantly complex, and the developmental situation variation of the loess landforms also exhibited a fairly stable status with gully order increasing. So, the loess watershed structure and its changes constructed the complex system of the loess landform, and it has the great significance for studying the spatial pattern and evolution law of the watershed geomorphology.