TITLE:
Morphometric Analysis of Drainage Basins in the Western Arabian Peninsula Using Multivariate Statistics
AUTHORS:
Ali P. Yunus, Takashi Oguchi, Yuichi S. Hayakawa
KEYWORDS:
Arabian Peninsula, Drainage Basin, Digital Elevation Model, Morphometry, Principal Component Analysis, Cluster Analysis
JOURNAL NAME:
International Journal of Geosciences,
Vol.5 No.5,
April
29,
2014
ABSTRACT:
The
uplift of the Arabian Shield and the opening of the Red Sea led to the
development of steep drainage systems in the Western Arabian Peninsula.
Although the Peninsula has been studied from a geological perspective, in
relation to oil production, plate tectonics and eolian systems such as sand
dunes, the steep mountainous drainage basins have received much less attention.
This paper aims to assess the characteristics and development of 36 drainage
basins in the Western Arabian Peninsula, using a digital elevation model (DEM),
principal component analysis (PCA), and hierarchical cluster analysis (CA).
Three major principal components (PC1 to PC3) are found to explain 73% of total
variance. CA divided the basins into two or four groups. The division by CA
strongly reflects PC1, showing that the two analyses give comparable results.
PC1 strongly reflects basin dimensions and drainage texture, and their positive
correlations indicate the significant effect of basin relief and slope on mass
wasting and limited stream incision in small basins under an arid climate. PC2
mainly reflects the effect of bedrock geology, suggesting that volcanic rocks
tend to produce more elongated and less eroded immature basins than crystalline
rocks do. PC3 mainly reflects the basin relief and slope and the length of each
stream segment, which may also reflect the effect of mass wasting on stream
development.