Moo-ving mountains: grazing agents drive terracette formation on steep hillslopes
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| Format: | Preprint |
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2025
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| _version_ | 1866908742477414400 |
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| author | Seleb, Benjamin Chatterjee, Atanu Bhamla, Saad |
| author_facet | Seleb, Benjamin Chatterjee, Atanu Bhamla, Saad |
| contents | Terracettes, striking, step-like landforms that stripe steep, vegetated hillslopes, have puzzled scientists for more than a century. Competing hypotheses invoke either slow mass-wasting or the relentless trampling of grazing animals, yet no mechanistic model has linked hoof-scale behavior to landscape-scale form. Here we bridge that gap with an active-walker model in which ungulates are represented as stochastic foragers moving on an erodible slope. Each agent weighs the energetic cost of climbing against the benefit of fresh forage; every hoof-fall compacts soil and lowers local biomass, subtly reshaping the energy landscape that guides subsequent steps. Over time, these stigmergic feedbacks concentrate traffic along cross-slope paths that coalesce into periodic tread-and-riser bands, morphologically analogous to natural terracettes. Our model illustrates how local foraging rules governing movement and substrate feedback can self-organize into large-scale topographic patterns, highlighting the wider role of decentralized biological processes in sculpting terrestrial landscapes. |
| format | Preprint |
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arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2504_17496 |
| institution | arXiv |
| publishDate | 2025 |
| record_format | arxiv |
| spellingShingle | Moo-ving mountains: grazing agents drive terracette formation on steep hillslopes Seleb, Benjamin Chatterjee, Atanu Bhamla, Saad Quantitative Methods Terracettes, striking, step-like landforms that stripe steep, vegetated hillslopes, have puzzled scientists for more than a century. Competing hypotheses invoke either slow mass-wasting or the relentless trampling of grazing animals, yet no mechanistic model has linked hoof-scale behavior to landscape-scale form. Here we bridge that gap with an active-walker model in which ungulates are represented as stochastic foragers moving on an erodible slope. Each agent weighs the energetic cost of climbing against the benefit of fresh forage; every hoof-fall compacts soil and lowers local biomass, subtly reshaping the energy landscape that guides subsequent steps. Over time, these stigmergic feedbacks concentrate traffic along cross-slope paths that coalesce into periodic tread-and-riser bands, morphologically analogous to natural terracettes. Our model illustrates how local foraging rules governing movement and substrate feedback can self-organize into large-scale topographic patterns, highlighting the wider role of decentralized biological processes in sculpting terrestrial landscapes. |
| title | Moo-ving mountains: grazing agents drive terracette formation on steep hillslopes |
| topic | Quantitative Methods |
| url | https://arxiv.org/abs/2504.17496 |