The erosional landscape evolves as the joint product of both tectonic activity and climate. The morphology of the long profiles of active rivers has been proven to be an archive to preserve and record the relationship of topographic relief, temporary and/or differential rock uplift rate, and climatically and/or lithologically related erosional efficiency. A simple but universal equation of the stream-power incision model provides an important means to analyze channel long profiles and to extract both temporal and spatial patterns of regional tectonic activity.
Click here for original story, RiverProAnalysis, an open-source set of Matlab scripts for river longitudinal profile analysis
Source: Phys.org