Letter abstract

Nature Geoscience 2, 766 - 771 (2009)
Published online: 25 October 2009 | Corrected online: 28 October 2009 | doi:10.1038/ngeo666

Subject Category: Geomorphology

Shrinking and splitting of drainage basins in orogenic landscapes from the migration of the main drainage divide

Stephane Bonnet1,2

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Climate, and in particular the spatial pattern of precipitation, is thought to affect the topographic and tectonic evolution of mountain belts through erosion1, 2, 3, 4, 5. Numerical model simulations have suggested that the main drainage divide continuously migrates and asymmetric topography in mountain ranges develops in response to horizontal tectonic motion6 or orographic precipitation7, 8. The effects of such a migration have, however, been challenging to observe in natural settings6. Here I document the effects of a lateral precipitation gradient on a landscape undergoing constant uplift in a laboratory modelling experiment. In the experiment, the drainage divide migrates towards the drier, leeward side of the mountain range, causing the drainage basins on the leeward side to shrink and split into smaller basins. This mechanism results in a progressively increasing number of drainage basins on the leeward side of the mountain range as the divide migrates, such that the expected relationship between the spacing of drainage basins and the location of the main drainage divide9 is maintained. I propose that this mechanism could clarify the drainage-divide migration and topographic asymmetry found in active orogenic mountain ranges, as seen in the Aconquija Range of Argentina10.

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  1. Géosciences Rennes, Université de Rennes 1, Campus de Beaulieu, 35042 Rennes Cedex, France
  2. CNRS/INSU, UMR 6118, Campus de Beaulieu, 35042 Rennes Cedex, France

Correspondence to: Stephane Bonnet1,2 e-mail: stephane.bonnet@univ-rennes1.fr

* In the version of this Letter originally published, in the second sentence of the abstract 'symmetric' should have been 'asymmetric'. This error has been corrected in the HTML and PDF versions of the text.

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