Along-Strike Escarpment Heterogeneity of the Western Ghats: A Synthesis of Drainage and Topography Using Digital Morphometric Tools

We present the first synthetic and systematic attempt to fingerprint topographic attributes of the Western Ghats passive margin escarpment using newly avaliable SRTM digital elevation data. Spanning 12 degrees of latitude, the escarpment is shown to exhibit contiguous segments where scarp sinuosity and relief, but also drainage basin attributes such as stream orientation, spacing of scarp, coastline and continentai divide, basin shape, basin hypsometry and stream longitudinal profile covary in ways that suggest differences in the process of retreat of the Western Ghats as a continuous yet heterogeneous landform. The methodology presented here could serve as an improvable template applicable to other escarpments around the world for comparative purposes. It can be potentially standardized as a tool designed to construct inferences about the variability of scarp retreat processes under a range of conditions tied to damage and geological structure. For the Western Ghats, we suggest that site-specific feedbacks between climate, drainage and geologic structure are key to understanding scarp dynamics and the manner in which the evolution of drainage boundaries across strike affect morphology and evolution along strike.