2024 CSDMS meeting-078

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=Please be seated. First on behalf of Lou and Brian, let me welcome you to Philadelphia (go birds) and thank you all for traveling to the beautiful Francie Cope House. If you live in Philadelphia understand that your thanks is reasonably somewhat muted, as we are not more than a thousand feet from a regional rail station. For those of you traveling from far away, say from about Colorado or farther, you get the extra thanks we took from the Philadelphians.

My name is Jo, and I became friends with Tyler and Annie shortly before I moved to Philadelphia in 2020. After I ended up just a few blocks away from them, they quickly became two of my closest friends, and probably the people I saw in Philadelphia the most frequently. I showed them movies that Tyler loved and Annie hated. I unsuccessfully helped Annie try to bully Tyler into climbing. And joined both of them in their favorite pastime, staring adoringly at Lou. This friendship peaked when they asked me to officiate their wedding in the philadelphia hard rock cafe in what ended up as a surprisingly macabre scene. It goes without saying how honored I am to be here with them, in front of their family and their friends and assist them in this wedding.

We are here today to celebrate the love of Annie and Tyler, and to witness and take part in their continued commitment to each other. Annie and Tyler met in June of 2017 in San Juan National Forest. They met as friends of friends, Tyler going on a yearly trip with his childhood friends, and Annie diving into the unknown, backpacking for the first time with her college friends from Saint Louis. They quickly found they shared a sense of humor and mutual appetite for time together, often ditching the friends they had come there to be with and hiking side by side behind the rest of the group. The affection they had for each other was clear, and when Anie left a jacket with the group before her flight, Tyler was immediately and unanimously chosen to return it to her, preferably in person.

After returning to their respective homes, they texted frequently, sharing jokes, movie reviews, and mundane details about their days. They texted so frequently in fact that Annie spent her last bad date texting Tyler the whole play by play as it happened. After that, it was clear that this was a relationship that needed to be pursued despite the distance. And so for the next two years Tyler visits DC, Annie visits saint louis and the relationship begins to blossom. Then Annie makes the somewhat explicable decision to move to Chicago for what they called “medium distance”.

Despite the distance their relationship continued to flourish thanks to nonstop texting, frequent facetime, long distance movie dates, plane tickets, train tickets, and of course more backing trips with that same beloved group of friends that brought them together in the first place. And finally, in 2019 they both move to Philadelphia, together for the same time as a couple for the first time. When I asked them what they liked about each other, what drew them towards each other, and the commitment of marriage, initially they were both unhelpful. This was, I do not think, due to the inherently malicious nature of either Tyler or Annie. Instead, it speaks to how completely they see everything they could want in a partner. Humor, intelligence, compassion, looks; they do not find each other lacking. Both this mutual love and the strong character that you both possess and see in each other is evident to all those who are close to you.

Annie, you said that you were drawn to Tyler’s grace and quiet charisma and through his actions and being, you have been taught patience and kindness. You said that Tyler is everyone's favorite person, which isn’t wrong, so be proud that you are marrying him.

Tyler, in Annie you found someone caring and confident, who pushed you out of your comfort zone and helped you build a dynamic and fulfilling life. You told me that Annie is someone who cares deeply about the people in her life and loves to make them happy, so be proud that you are marrying her.

May you continue to have a life where you share not only love and humor, but continued growth at the hand of the other.

One thing you both said to me was how much you admired the other's ability to make friends. These friendships are the reason you found each other. The friendships you’ve made since then would not be possible without the other, and these friends both old and new are represented here today.

Now two of these friends will give readings on love, picked by the couple.

Tyler and Annie, your marriage is a celebration that you both have been lucky to meet each other, and admire and respect each other; trust each other, and most importantly love each other so much. You understand the unique value of commitment and choose to undergo the personal bond of marriage to remind yourselves that you are on a long journey to build something stronger, and bigger than either of you individually; something that you could not do on your own. You undergo this deep legal commitment because you understand how deeply you want your lives to be interconnected, pooling resources to build a home together and to be responsible for not only each other's happiness but each other's livelihood.

But this commitment is also not only personally meaningful to you, it's practically meaningful to your community gathered here today. Annie, at your bachelorette party I met Carly, someone Tyler has known for his entire life, and Tyler, at your bachelor party, was Jordan, one of Annie’s closest college friends, and Brannon, the husband of another! Not only have you brought your friends into each other's lives, but you have made new friends together, and brought those friends together with each other forming new friendships, new friendships that will form and deepen even today. By committing to each other so fully, you cement the many friendships you have brought together over these past 5 years making it clear that your commitment to each other is also a commitment to these many relationships you have fostered.

Annie and Tyler, not only have you built the many friendships that you see here today, you were also brought together by your friendships and so your love is, among many things, a testament to your many wonderful friends. And just as you both have built and relied on many strong friendships, I have no doubt that you will build an equally strong marriage.

Tyler and Annie are self uniting, as is their right in the great commonwealth of Pennsylvania. However, to honor their commitment in front of their family and friends, I ask them:

Tyler, do you vow to continue to build your life together, with sweetness and love, to help each other grow, to keep the spirit of rock and roll alive, and and to care for each other like you have both cared for all of the people here who serve as witness?

Annie, do you vow to continue to build your life together, with sweetness and love, to help each other grow, to keep the spirit of rock and roll alive, and and to care for each other like you have both cared for all of the people here who serve as witness?

Then take these rings, and may they serve as a reminder of your commitment to each other and a symbol of your love.

By the highest powers we know, Lou and Brian, I pronounce you married.

Fractal Dimensions of River Networks and Hack's Law =

Jo Martin, CU Boulder Boulder Colorado, United States. jo.martin@colorado.edu

Fractal geometry is a branch of mathematics pioneered by Benoit Mandelbrot in the 1970's with the goal of finding a mathematically rigorous way to define the geometry found in nature, including what he saw in river networks. Since then, much work on the geometry and structure of river networks has involved fractal method, from passing mention to assumed fractal characteristic's to trying to tie older geomorphic parameters to Mandelbrot's fractal math. However results on the fractal dimensions of river networks have been contradictory and not always well matched to theoretical explanations of fractal geometry. For example, in a 1988 work, Tarboton et al. found that the measured fractal dimension of river networks transitioned from close to 1 at small scales to close to 2 at large scales. They attributed this to switching from a regime where fractal dimension was dominated by Sinuosity to one where it was dominated by the branching characteristics of rivers. Neither of these matches Mandelbrot's prediction of a fractal dimension of 1.2 for river networks, which he derived from a Hack exponent of 0.6, used in the relation between stream length and basin area, which would likely be influenced by river branching. More recent unpublished calculation of the fractal dimension of large North American river basins found a dimension close 1.1, which conveniently would correspond to a Hack exponent of 0.55 which matches more recent empirical work on Hack's law. To better understand the connection between fractal dimension and Hack's Law, in this poster I present work comparing the fractal dimension of modeled river networks to physical ones, and look at what theoretical parameters may explain them variability in measured fractal dimensions of river networks.