EXPERIMENTAL-EVIDENCE FOR SELF-AFFINE ROUGHENING IN A MICROMODEL OF GEOMORPHOLOGICAL EVOLUTION

An experimental evidence for kinetic roughening in a micromodel of mou ntain ranges is presented. We have observed that during the watering o f an initially smooth ridge made of a mixture of silica sand and earth y soil the surface, evolves into a shape analogous to actual mountain profiles with self-affine geometry. For the exponents describing respe ctively the temporal and the spatial scaling of the surface width beta almost-equal-to 0.9 and alpha=0.78 +/- 0.05 have been obtained. The l atter value is in very good agreement with alpha=0.8 +/- 0.1 we have c alculated for genuine transect profiles.