Abstract
Stream networks express how Earth’s hydrologic cycle is embedded within its three-dimensional topography. In a top-down view, a stream network’s morphology is often described by its topological connectivity and branching geometry. Although these two characteristics are naturally connected, they have mostly been studied independently, leaving their co-evolution poorly understood. Here, we analyze the topology and geometry of 16,322 5th-order real-world stream networks across the contiguous United States, showing how they are shaped by climate and the evolution of Earth’s topography. We find that ~73% of these networks show topological self-similarity in their branching patterns and that small tributaries join larger streams at systematically wider angles. Our analysis further reveals that correlations between climate and network topology observed in other studies are mainly mediated through the climate-dependence of networks’ geometric and topographic properties, such as their junction angles and channel slope ratios of merging tributaries. These findings demonstrate the co-evolution of network geometry, topography, and topology under the influence of landscape evolution driven by climatic forcing.
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Data availability
The National Hydrographic Dataset Plus High Resolution (NHDPlus-HR) is available from https://www.usgs.gov/national-hydrography/nhdplus-high-resolution, and the Aridity Index dataset is available from Trabucco & Zomer (2019)58 (https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.7504448.v3). The global lithology map dataset is available from Hartmann & Moosdorf (2012)60(https://doi.org/10.1594/PANGAEA.788537). The datasets used to produce our results are available at https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.18627184.
Code availability
The code to reproduce the main results of this study is available at https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.18650981.
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Acknowledgements
The authors thank S. Mudd and three anonymous reviewers for feedback and insights. X.F. acknowledges support from the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No.U2340223). H.S. acknowledges support from the EU Horizon CryoSCOPE project supported by the State Secretariat for Education, Research and Innovation (grant number: 101184736). P.R. acknowledges support from the NASA Surface Water and Ocean Topography program (grant 80NSSC24K1654).
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Open access funding provided by Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich.
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M.L. and H.S. conceived the study. M.L. led the methodology development, investigation, visualization, writing of the original draft, and editing of the manuscript. H.S. contributed to methodology development, morphological interpretations, and manuscript editing. X.F. and B.W. supported the study. X.F. and P.R. contributed to the discussion and editing process of the final manuscript. J.K. contributed to the conceptualization, interpretation, discussion, review, and editing of the work. X.F. and J.K. supervised the work.
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Li, M., Seybold, H., Fu, X. et al. Climate’s influence on topography encoded in stream network topology and geometry. Nat Commun (2026). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-026-70200-0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-026-70200-0
