Fractal dimension and geomorphological analysis of Brazilian watersheds
Keywords:
rede de drenagem, geometria fractal, geomorfologia de riosAbstract
The fractal characterization of the catchment drainage network arises from the need to better understand how hydrological phenomena occurs, taking into account the influence of geomorphological factors. Thus, physical and fractal characteristics of a catchment integrate important elements to analyze its hydrological behavior. Thus, the objective of this work was to estimate the fractal dimension of 6 sub-catchments with different characteristics by the Box-Counting method and to verify the relationship between fractal dimension of river courses (df) and drainage network (Df) and other watershed characteristics such as main river length, area, perimeter, drainage density and catchment declivity .The study area was a set of six sub-catchments, from the Malacara, Leão, Pavão, Faxinalzinho, Arroio Josafaz, and Forno rivers, which belong to the Mampituba catchment (RS/SC). The form factor (F) and the compactness coefficient (Kc) of the catchments where analyzed and the Box-Counting method was applied to calculate the fractal dimension. The F values found were less than 0.50, and the highest values were for the Faxinalzinho (F = 0.27) and Leão (F = 0.21) catchment and the lowest value for the Malacara catchment (F = 0.09). Kc values were all higher than 1.50, indicating a low tendency to flooding. Given the values of df and Df obtained by the Box-Counting method, it was possible to verify that they were satisfactory, observing that there are significant positive correlations between the fractal dimension with average basin width, area and perimeter of the basins explored in this study. In this sense, the application of the fractal geometry analysis method proved to be a viable methodology, being an important tool in the geometric assessment of a catchment.
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