Pits, Mounds and Soil Transport on Hillslopes in NW Delaware

Pit and mound topography in hardwood forests in the Piedmont of northwest Delaware exhibit a range of forms based on age. This change in shape with age provides an opportunity to place constraints on the dominant transport process acting on the hillslope at this local scale, as well as longer term hillslope transport rates. This is done via numerical modeling of pit and mound profiles. Applying a slope-dependent transport law to a young measured profile provides a forward model of pit and mound topography. Slope-dependent transport yields consistent predictions about mound and pit evolution. Namely, asperities on the mound are rapidly smoothed out. The pit fills with sediment. The uphill scarp reclines. Both upslope from the pit and downslope from the mound, the evolution of topography depends strongly on the boundary conditions in the model. A "no flux" boundary yields a growing wedge at the base and reclining slope at the top of the profile, both of which are inconsistent with old pit and mound profiles. A constant flux boundary must be estimated to replicate observed profiles. Specified flux boundaries from numerical modeling provide some estimate, then, of longer term transport rates along the hillslope. Both the up and down slope effects (in the numerical model) are small, however, relative to the large changes of steep slopes on the mound itself. The slope-dependent transport model yields a strong and fairly straight- forward prediction: asperities smooth rapidly over time. Older mound profiles do spread out over the hillslope over time, suggesting a diffusive type of transport. However, slope-dependent diffusive transport does not adequately describe all of the mounds we observe. Sharp asperities persist on many mounds long after the log has decayed and the pit has largely filled in. Why? Pebbles mantle many of the older mounds, and rock- capped pedestals are common. Rock-covered pinnacles imply that rain splash and/or surface runoff are dominant sediment transporting agents on the mounds. While rainsplash is often thought to be fundamentally diffusive, particularly in uniform sandy substrates, in the presence of scattered pebbles, a "non-diffusive" form appears.