Arctic soil patterns analogous to fluid instabilities.

摘要: Slow-moving arctic soils commonly organize into striking large-scale spatial patterns called solifluction terraces and lobes. Though these features impact hillslope stability, carbon storage release, landscape response to climate change, no mechanistic explanation exists for their formation. Everyday fluids—such as paint dripping down walls—produce markedly similar fingering resulting from competition between viscous cohesive forces. Here we use a scaling analysis show that soil cohesion hydrostatic effects can lead in soils. A large new dataset of high-resolution lobe spacing morphology across Norway supports theoretical predictions indicates newly observed climatic control on dynamics and patterns. Our findings provide quantitative common pattern Earth other planets, illuminating the importance forces dynamics. These operate at length time scales previously unrecognized, with implications toward understanding fluid-solid dynamics particulate systems complex rheology.