BasinTools - Calculate Morphological Characteristics
Surface-water runoff is a function of many interrelated factors including climate, soils, land-use, and the physiography of
the drainage basin. A practical and effective method to quantify drainage basin characteristics would allow analysis of the
interellations of these factors, leading to an improved understanding of the effects of drainage basin characteristics on
surface water runoff. Historically the quantification of drainage basin characteristics has been a tedious and time-consuming
process. Basinsoft made improvements by automating the process of calculating these characteristics, and these Geoprocessing
tools extend those methods to take advantage of the latest ESRI ArcObjects tools available to provide a more efficient,
automated procedure for quantifying selected morphological characteristics of a drainage basin.
The inputs for the Calculate Morphological Characteristics ArcToolbox Tool are as follows:
- Basin Feature Layer Defines the boundary of the drainage basin.
- Streams Feature Layer Defines the drainage network of streams in a vector format.
- Contours Feature Layer Defines the contours for the drainage basin.
- Elevation Grid Raster Layer Defines the elevation values within the drainage basin.
- Data Projected Coordinate System Defines the Coordinate system for all the input layers. This is used to determine appropriate area/length calculations. If all the data is provided in a Geographic Coordinate System, BasinTools will project the features to WGS 1984 World Mercator before taking measurements.
- Output Directory The output directory where the output file(s) will be placed.
- Output Filename The name of the text file that will hold all the morphological characteristic values for the drainage basin.
- Show output file upon completion A checkbox which simply flags whether to open the text file output from the tool after it is complete.
BasinTools Calculate Morphological Characteristics Output Explanation:
| BASINNAME | Basin Name is derived by looking for similarities in the layer names. |
| TDA | Total Drainage Area, in square miles, is a measurement of the area of the drainage basin and it includes noncontributing areas. |
| NCDA | Non Contributing Drainage Area, in square miles, is the total area of the drainage basin that does not contribute to the surface-water runoff at the basin outlet. |
| CDA | Contributing Drainage Area, in square miles, is the total area of the drainage basin that does contributes to the surface-water runoff at the basin outlet. |
| BL | Basin Length, in miles, is measured alone a line areally centered through the drainage-divide from the basin outlet to where the main channel extends to meet the basin divide. |
| BP | Basin Perimeter, in miles, is measured along the entire drainage basin divide. |
| BS | Average Basin Slope, in feet per mile, is measured by the "contour band" method, within the contributing drainage area. |
| BR | Basin Relief, in feet, is measured as the difference between the elevation of the higest grid cell and the elevation of the grid cell at the basin outlet. |
| BA | Basin Azimuth, in degrees, is the compass direction of a line projected from where the main channel, if extended, meets the basin divide downslope to the basin outlet. Measured clockwise from north at 0°. |
| BW | Effective Basin Width, in miles. |
| SF | Shape Factor, dimensionless, ratio of basin length to effective basin width. |
| ER | Elongation Ratio, dimensionless, ratio of (1) the diameter of a circle of area equal to that of the basin to (2) the length of the basin. |
| RB | Rotundity of Basin, dimensionless. |
| CR | Compactness Ratio, dimensionless, the ratio of the perimeter of the basin to the circumference of a circle of equal area. |
| RR | Relative Relief, in feet per mile. |
| MCL | Main Channel Length, in miles, is measured along the main channel from the basin outlet to where the main channel, if extended, meets the basin divide. |
| TSL | Total Stream Length, in miles, is computed by summing the length of all stream segments within the contributing drainage area. |
| MCS | Main Channel Slope, in feet per mile, is an index of the slope of the main channel computed from the difference in streambed elevation at points 10 percent and 85 percent of the distances along the main channel from basin outlet to the basin divide. |
| MCSR | Main Channel Sinuosity Ratio, dimensionless. |
| SD | Stream Density, in miles per square mile, within the CDA. |
| CCM | Constant of Channel Maintenance, in square miles per mile, within the CDA. |
| MCSP | Main Channel Slope Proportion, dimensionless. |
| RN | Ruggedness Number, in feet per mile. |
| SR | Slope Ratio, dimensionless, is the ratio between the main channel slope to basin slope, within the CDA. |
| FOS | Number of First Order Streams within the CDA, dimensionless, is computed using the Strahler's method of stream ordering and summary statistics. |
| BSO | Basin Stream Order, dimensionless, is the stream order of the main channel at the basin outlet. BSO is computed by intersecting the main channel with the drainage divide and determining the Strahler stream order of the stream at the basin outlet. |
| DF | Drainage Frequency, in number of first order streams per square mile, within the CDA. |
| RSD | Relative Stream Density, dimensionless, within the CDA. |
| MAXGRD | Maximum Grid Elevation, in feet. |
| MINGRD | Minimum Grid Elevation, in feet. |
| GRDRELF | Relief in Grid Elevation, in feet, is the difference of elevations between the maximum and minimum elevations. |
Click this button to Purchase BasinTools (9.3.x) Toolbox geoprocessor
NVS Vector Stream Tool (v1.0)
NVS Vector Stream Tool is a user-friendly ArcCatalog (9.3.x) Toolbox geoprocessing tool which simply assigns a numeric order to segments of a polyline featureclass.
Unlike the Spatial Analyst Tools for Hydrography, this tool solely uses vector stream data instead of raster stream data accompanied by a flow direction raster.
The output of this tool is somewhat dependant on the input featureclass: If the input is a coverage the output is treated like a calculation and added to the map
with all the fields of the coverage, otherwise input featureclass is modified in place. Either way a stream order field defined by the user is added to the output
(or overwritten if the field already exists) and the values are updated to show the stream order value of each stream.
NVS Vector Stream Tool is FREE!
The inputs for the NVS Vector Stream Tool are as follows:
- Streams Feature Layer Defines the drainage network of streams in a vector format. This layer does have a few requirements:
- Output Field This is the name of the field in the output that will hold the stream order number. If the input is a coverage the output is treated like a calculation and added to the map with all the fields of the coverage, otherwise input featureclass is modified in place. Either way, this field is added to the output (or overwritten if the field already exists) and the values are updated to show the stream order value of each stream.
- Stream Order Method The method used for assigning stream order.
- STRAHLER — The method of stream ordering proposed by Robert E. Horton (1945) and Arthur Newell Strahler (1952, 1957). All streams with no tributaries are assigned a base order of one and they only increase when streams of the same order intersect. Therefore, the intersection of a first-order and second-order link will remain a second-order stream, rather than create a third-order stream. This is the default.
- SHREVE — The method of stream ordering by magnitude, proposed by Shreve in 1967. All links with no tributaries are assigned a magnitude (order) of one. Magnitudes are additive downslope. When two links intersect, their magnitudes are added and assigned to the downslope link.
Fields "FNODE#" and "TNODE#" defining the source and destination nodes of each edge in the stream network.
If you do not have these fields you can generate them by converting the stream layer to a coverage.
You can also alternatively use "FNODE_" and "TNODE_" if not using a coverage
Stream Order Example Output:
Strahler Method Output
Shreve Method Output
Click this button to download NVS Vector Stream Tool for free!