Abstract
Abstract. Modeling glacial landform evolution is more challenging than modeling fluvial landform evolution. While several numerical models of large-scale fluvial erosion are available, there are only a few models of glacial erosion, and their application over long time spans requires a high numerical effort. In this paper, a simple formulation of glacial erosion which is similar to the fluvial stream-power model is presented. The model reproduces the occurrence of overdeepenings, hanging valleys, and steps at confluences at least qualitatively. Beyond this, it allows for a seamless coupling to fluvial erosion and sediment transport. The recently published direct numerical scheme for fluvial erosion and sediment transport can be applied to the entire domain, where the numerical effort is only moderately higher than for a purely fluvial system. Simulations over several million years on lattices of several million nodes can be performed on standard PCs. An open-source implementation is freely available as a part of the landform evolution model OpenLEM.
Highlights
Glaciers have played a major part in shaping several orogens on Earth
In contrast to fluvial erosion, glacial erosion has not been extensively considered in modeling largescale landform evolution
Glacier dynamics are still more difficult to observe than fluvial dynamics, and there are larger uncertainties about the relevance of the processes involved in glacial landform evolution (e.g., Alley et al, 2019)
Summary
Glaciers have played a major part in shaping several orogens on Earth. In contrast to fluvial erosion, glacial erosion has not been extensively considered in modeling largescale landform evolution. Models of large-scale fluvial landform evolution (for an overview, see, e.g., Willgoose, 2005; Wobus et al, 2006) are typically based on a simple expression for the erosion rate which dates back to studies of longitudinal river profiles by Hack (1957) and was introduced in numerical landform evolution modeling by Howard (1994) This relation is often referred to as the stream-power law or as the stream-power incision model and considers the erosion rate E as a function of the upstream catchment size A and the channel slope S in the form. Both models still require small time increments and are computationally expensive
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