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<front>
<journal-meta>
<journal-id journal-id-type="publisher">EGUsphere</journal-id>
<journal-title-group>
<journal-title>EGUsphere</journal-title>
<abbrev-journal-title abbrev-type="publisher">EGUsphere</abbrev-journal-title>
<abbrev-journal-title abbrev-type="nlm-ta">EGUsphere</abbrev-journal-title>
</journal-title-group>
<issn pub-type="epub"></issn>
<publisher><publisher-name>Copernicus Publications</publisher-name>
<publisher-loc>Göttingen, Germany</publisher-loc>
</publisher>
</journal-meta>
<article-meta>
<article-id pub-id-type="doi">10.5194/egusphere-2026-3226</article-id>
<title-group>
<article-title>A stochastic model of hierarchical sediment transport in watershed</article-title>
</title-group>
<contrib-group><contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>Zhang</surname>
<given-names>Jun</given-names>
</name>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff1">
<sup>1</sup>
</xref>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff2">
<sup>2</sup>
</xref>
</contrib>
<contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>Li</surname>
<given-names>Yong</given-names>
<ext-link>https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5680-3131</ext-link>
</name>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff1">
<sup>1</sup>
</xref>
</contrib>
<contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>Guo</surname>
<given-names>Xiaojun</given-names>
<ext-link>https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3149-7163</ext-link>
</name>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff1">
<sup>1</sup>
</xref>
</contrib>
<contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>Song</surname>
<given-names>Dongri</given-names>
<ext-link>https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6892-9770</ext-link>
</name>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff1">
<sup>1</sup>
</xref>
</contrib>
<contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>Turowski</surname>
<given-names>Jens M.</given-names>
<ext-link>https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1558-0565</ext-link>
</name>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff3">
<sup>3</sup>
</xref>
</contrib>
</contrib-group><aff id="aff1">
<label>1</label>
<addr-line>Key Laboratory of Mountain Hazards and Engineering Resilience/Institute of Mountain Hazards and Environment, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Chengdu 610041, China</addr-line>
</aff>
<aff id="aff2">
<label>2</label>
<addr-line>State Key Laboratory of Hydroscience and Engineering, Department of Hydraulic Engineering, Tsinghua University, Beijing 100084, China</addr-line>
</aff>
<aff id="aff3">
<label>3</label>
<addr-line>German Research Centre for Geosciences (GFZ), Telegrafenberg, 14473 Potsdam, Germany</addr-line>
</aff>
<pub-date pub-type="epub">
<day>22</day>
<month>07</month>
<year>2026</year>
</pub-date>
<volume>2026</volume>
<fpage>1</fpage>
<lpage>45</lpage>
<permissions>
<copyright-statement>Copyright: &#x000a9; 2026 Jun Zhang et al.</copyright-statement>
<copyright-year>2026</copyright-year>
<license license-type="open-access">
<license-p>This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. To view a copy of this licence, visit <ext-link ext-link-type="uri"  xlink:href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/</ext-link></license-p>
</license>
</permissions>
<self-uri xlink:href="https://egusphere.copernicus.org/preprints/2026/egusphere-2026-3226/">This article is available from https://egusphere.copernicus.org/preprints/2026/egusphere-2026-3226/</self-uri>
<self-uri xlink:href="https://egusphere.copernicus.org/preprints/2026/egusphere-2026-3226/egusphere-2026-3226.pdf">The full text article is available as a PDF file from https://egusphere.copernicus.org/preprints/2026/egusphere-2026-3226/egusphere-2026-3226.pdf</self-uri>
<abstract>
<p>Debris flows often occur as intermittent surges in succession; a single event may comprise tens to hundreds of separate surges. While previous studies have focused primarily on isolated surge dynamics, the temporal evolution and statistical properties of the surge sequences as an entirety remain poorly understood. Here, we present a comprehensive analysis of global debris flow datasets, including velocity, discharge, sediment volume, and inter-surge intervals. We quantitatively characterize the surge sequences by the statistic features of the key parameters, revealing 1) a general decay trend in fluctuating discharge, 2) universal distributions for flow velocity (Weibull), discharge/sediment volume (exponentially-modified power-law), and inter-surge intervals (exponential), and 3) self-similar structure in sequence organization. These findings motivate the development of a novel stochastic modeling framework that conceptualizes surge sequences through three key components: 1) The cascading thinning of mass sequences originating from Poisson processes of source failures and inter-processes of bank and bed erosions driven by hydrologic process, 2) a selection coefficient generated through Gaussian process to integrate the effective contributions of mass from multi-sources, 3) model parameter calibration using local monitoring data and experimental validation. Numerical simulations demonstrate the model&apos;s ability to accurately replicate observed surge sequences. Notably, the framework spontaneously generates a unified distribution of discharge and sediment volume in the form of a truncated power-law with an exponential cutoff. This provides a novel magnitude&amp;ndash;frequency relationship for mass movements and can also be applied to large-scale sediment transport studies.</p>
</abstract>
<counts><page-count count="45"/></counts>
<funding-group>
<award-group id="gs1">
<funding-source>National Social Science Fund Youth Project</funding-source>
<award-id>42501091</award-id>
</award-group>
<award-group id="gs2">
<funding-source>National Natural Science Foundation of China</funding-source>
<award-id>42322703, 42271092</award-id>
</award-group>
<award-group id="gs3">
<funding-source>Institute of Mountain Hazards and Environment, Chinese Academy of Sciences</funding-source>
<award-id>KLMHER-K22</award-id>
</award-group>
<award-group id="gs4">
<funding-source>National Postdoctoral Program for Innovative Talents</funding-source>
<award-id>GZC20231347</award-id>
</award-group>
</funding-group>
</article-meta>
</front>
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<back>
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