Regular spacing of drainage outlets from linear fault blocks

Outlets of river basins located on fault blocks often show a regular spacing. This regularity is most pronounced for fault blocks with linear ridge crests and a constant half‐width, measured perpendicular to the ridge crest. The ratio of the half‐width of the fault block and the outlet spacing is used in this study to characterize the average shape (or spacing ratio) of 31 sets of drainage basins. These fault‐block spacing ratios are compared with similar data from small‐scale flume experiments and large‐scale mountain belts. Fault‐block spacing ratios are much more variable than those measured for mountain belts. Differences between fault‐block spacing ratios are attributed to variability in factors influencing the initial spacing of channel heads and subsequent rates of channel incision during the early stages of channel network growth (e.g. initial slope and uplift rate, precipitation, runoff efficiency and substrate erodibility). Widening or narrowing of fault blocks during ongoing faulting will also make spacing ratios more variable. It is enigmatic that some of these factors do not produce similar variability in mountain belt spacing ratios. Flume experiments in which drainage networks were grown on static topography show a strong correlation between spacing ratios and surface gradient. Spacing ratios on fault blocks are unaffected by variations in present‐day gradients. Drainage basins on the Wheeler Ridge anticline in central California, which have formed on surfaces progressively uplifted by thrust faulting during the last 14 kyr, demonstrate that outlet spacing is likely to be determined during the early stages of drainage growth. This dependency on initial conditions may explain the lack of correlation between spacing ratios of fault blocks and slopes measured at the present day.

Spacing ratios determine the location of sediment supply points to adjacent areas of deposition, and hence strongly influence the spatial scale of lateral facies variations in the proximal parts of sedimentary basins. Spacing ratios may be used to estimate this length scale in ancient sedimentary basins if the width of adjacent topography is known. Spacing ratio variability makes these estimates much less precise for fault blocks than for mountain belts.