Meandering Fractals in Water Resources Management

Fractal dimension is a measure for the degree of complexity or that of fractals. An alternative to fractal dimension is ht-index, which quantifies complexity in a unique way. Back to your question, the physical meaning of fractal dimension is that many natural and social phenomena are nonlinear rather than linear, and are fractal rather than Euclidean. We need a new paradigm for studying our surrounding phenomena, Not Newtonian physics for simple systems, but complexity theory for complex systems, Not linear mathematics such as calculus, Gaussian statistics, and Euclidean geometry, but online mathematics including fractal geometry, chaos theory, and complexity science in general. A channel is characterized by its width, depth, and slope. The regime theory relates these characteristics to the water and sediment discharge transported bye the channel empirically. Empirical measurements are taken on channels and attempts are made to fit empirical equations to the observed data. The channel characteristics are related primarily to the discharge but allowance is also made for variations in other variables, such as sediment size.