Stream order, hierarchy, and energy convergence of land use

Shu-Li Huang, William W. Budd, Shih-Liang Chan and Ying-Chen Lin

Ecological Modelling, 2007, vol. 205, issue 1, 255-264

Abstract: The streams in a watershed are organized as a network. From an ecological energetic point of view, this hierarchical organization is a result of the convergence of energy. This paper investigates the convergence of river energy and its relation to the energetic hierarchy of land use in the Tansui River Basin. Stream order is used to rank and measure stream position in the hierarchy of tributaries. Stream transformity is used to measure the energetic hierarchy of streams and the relative position of any particular stream in a scale of increasing energy quality. The spatial analysis capability of GIS is used to calculate the spatial distribution of accumulated rainfall emergy, the geopotential energy of runoff, and transformities of surface runoff and streams. The results indicate that stream order corresponds to transformity. The series of transformities increase with successive convergence of streams and this explains the hierarchical organization of the Tansui River. The spatial pattern of land-use transformity is also compared with runoff and stream transformities in the Tansui River Basin. As a result, the hierarchy of land use in Tansui River Basin is correlated to the hierarchy of streams and runoff and supports the hypothetical influence of stream energetic convergence on the spatial pattern of land use.

Keywords: Energy convergence; Hierarchy; Land use; Stream network; Transformity; Tansui River (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2007
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S030438000700097X
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:ecomod:v:205:y:2007:i:1:p:255-264

DOI: 10.1016/j.ecolmodel.2007.02.023

Access Statistics for this article

Ecological Modelling is currently edited by Brian D. Fath

More articles in Ecological Modelling from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().