Disentangling relative controls of landscape evolution and spatial heterogeneity in the Vaigai River Basin, southern India: Regional implications and applicability

Abstract

Deciphering tectono-climatic-lithological and other controls over landscape evolution at variable spa-tiotemporal scales is paramount in natural resources management and development. We have systemat-ically documented and analysed selected critical quantitative morphometric data, namely, asymmetry factor, hypsometric integral, hypsometric curve, drainage divide migration and normalised steepness index, in addition to the assessment of longitudinal profiles and knickpoints, for a unique morphological river basin, the Vaigai River Basin, located in southern India. The spatial variability of various controls of geomorphological characteristics of the basin is interpreted using these morphometric parameters and field data. Notable results include, predominance of a concave-up nature of the majority of the sub-basins, occurrence of a distinct convex zone in the upper part and a distinctly concave zone in the lower part of the basin, a range of symmetric to asymmetric topographic nature with very prominent asymme-try in the middle of the basin, highest normalised channel steepness in the northernmost sub-basin and insignificant and lesser steepness in the majority of the basin, evidence of north-easterly migration of drainage divides within the river basin, manifested by sub-basin boundaries and the alignment of the majority of the knickpoints parallel to the NE-SW trending Karur-Kambam-Painavu-Thrissur shear zone. The results cumulatively indicate that the Vaigai River that runs on an antecedent basin continues evolv-ing, principally under the controls of regional Precambrian structures. Nevertheless, the evolution has been episodic and spatially varied. The resurgent tectonic influence is more pronounced in the northern and north-western parts of the basin, while the river capture and drainage divide migration are pro-nounced in the northeastern part, signifying the collective influence of tectonics and climate. On the con-trary, the middle and lower reaches of the basin lack a soil-sediment-weathered zone, signifying the prevalence of an intense erosional phase of the river. This information, together with previously docu-mented catastrophic flooding events and sediment accumulation, categorise the river basin as episodi-cally active, and in a transient phase of evolution. While providing affirmative evidence for the previous regional geomorphological model, the interpretation of the continuum of inherited Precambrian structures in the present study implies that there are subtle spatial differences of lithological-climatological and structural controls within and among each of the sub-basins that need to be considered for any natural resources management at local to regional scales.

Keywords

Incised River Basin / Lithological influences / Regional landscape evolution / Tectono-climatic controls / Vaigai River Basin

CRediT authorship contribution statement

K.J. Juni: Writing - original draft, Software, Methodology, Investigation, Data curation. M. Ramkumar: Writing - review & editing, Writing - original draft, Validation, Supervision, Investiga-tion, Data curation, Conceptualization. B. Venkateshwaran: Writ-ing - original draft, Software, Methodology. D. Menier: Visualization, Validation, Software, Conceptualization. M.J. Mathew: Writing - review & editing, Validation, Formal analysis. K. Balasubramani: Writing - review & editing, Validation, Investi-gation. N.A. Siddiqui: Writing - review & editing.

Declaration of competing interest

The authors declare that they have no known competing finan-cial interests or personal relationsh ips that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

Acknowledgement

We acknowledged the editor and reviewers for their valuable and constructive comments, which significantly improved the clar-ity, style, and overall content of the manuscript. JKJ acknowledges Periyar University for providing the University Research Fellow-ship for the Doctoral program. The MoUs signed between the Periyar University, Universite of South Brittany, France, Curtin University, Malaysia, and Universiti Teknologi Petronas, Malaysia, facilitated collaborative work, and the authors are thankful for the same.

Code availability

https://github.com/VenkateshwaranB/BasinChiAnalysis.

Appendix A. Supplementa ry data

Supplementary data to this article can be found online at https://doi.org/10.1016/j.gsf.2025.102128.

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