RivGraph: Automatic extraction and analysis of river and delta channel network topology
Abstract
River networks sustain life and landscapes by carrying and distributing water, sediment, and nutrients throughout ecosystems and communities. At the largest scale, river networks drain continents through tree-like tributary networks. At typically smaller scales, river deltas and braided rivers form loopy, complex distributary river networks via avulsions and bifurcations.In order to model flows through these networks or analyze network structure, the topology, or connectivity, of the network must be resolved. Additionally, morphologic properties of each river channel as well as the direction of flow through the channel inform how fluxes travel through the network’s channels. Riv Graphis a Python package that automates the extraction and characterization of river channel networks from a user-provided binary image, or mask, of a channel network (Fig. 1). Masks may be derived from (typically remotely-sensed) imagery, simulations, or even hand-drawn. RivGraph will create explicit representations of the channel network by resolving river centerlines as links, and junctions as nodes. Flow directions are solved for each link of the network without using auxiliary data, e.g., a digital elevation model (DEM). Morphologic properties are computed as well, including link lengths, widths, sinuosities, branching angles,and braiding indices. If provided,RivGraph will preserve georeferencing information of the mask and willmore »
- Authors:
-
[1];
[2]
- Los Alamos National Lab. (LANL), Los Alamos, NM (United States)
- Univ. of Texas, Austin, TX (United States)
- Publication Date:
- Research Org.:
- Los Alamos National Lab. (LANL), Los Alamos, NM (United States)
- Sponsoring Org.:
- USDOE Laboratory Directed Research and Development (LDRD) Program; National Science Foundation (NSF)
- OSTI Identifier:
- 1783539
- Report Number(s):
- LA-UR-21-20218
Journal ID: ISSN 2475-9066
- Grant/Contract Number:
- 89233218CNA000001; EAR-1719670
- Resource Type:
- Accepted Manuscript
- Journal Name:
- Journal of Open Source Software
- Additional Journal Information:
- Journal Volume: 6; Journal Issue: 59; Journal ID: ISSN 2475-9066
- Publisher:
- Open Source Initiative - NumFOCUS
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
- Subject:
- 97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING; 54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES; Earth Sciences; rivers; networks; deltas; topology; graph theory; fluvial geomorphology
Citation Formats
Schwenk, Jon, and Hariharan, Jayaram. RivGraph: Automatic extraction and analysis of river and delta channel network topology. United States: N. p., 2021.
Web. doi:10.21105/joss.02952.
Schwenk, Jon, & Hariharan, Jayaram. RivGraph: Automatic extraction and analysis of river and delta channel network topology. United States. https://doi.org/10.21105/joss.02952
Schwenk, Jon, and Hariharan, Jayaram. Wed .
"RivGraph: Automatic extraction and analysis of river and delta channel network topology". United States. https://doi.org/10.21105/joss.02952. https://www.osti.gov/servlets/purl/1783539.
@article{osti_1783539,
title = {RivGraph: Automatic extraction and analysis of river and delta channel network topology},
author = {Schwenk, Jon and Hariharan, Jayaram},
abstractNote = {River networks sustain life and landscapes by carrying and distributing water, sediment, and nutrients throughout ecosystems and communities. At the largest scale, river networks drain continents through tree-like tributary networks. At typically smaller scales, river deltas and braided rivers form loopy, complex distributary river networks via avulsions and bifurcations.In order to model flows through these networks or analyze network structure, the topology, or connectivity, of the network must be resolved. Additionally, morphologic properties of each river channel as well as the direction of flow through the channel inform how fluxes travel through the network’s channels. Riv Graphis a Python package that automates the extraction and characterization of river channel networks from a user-provided binary image, or mask, of a channel network (Fig. 1). Masks may be derived from (typically remotely-sensed) imagery, simulations, or even hand-drawn. RivGraph will create explicit representations of the channel network by resolving river centerlines as links, and junctions as nodes. Flow directions are solved for each link of the network without using auxiliary data, e.g., a digital elevation model (DEM). Morphologic properties are computed as well, including link lengths, widths, sinuosities, branching angles,and braiding indices. If provided,RivGraph will preserve georeferencing information of the mask and will export results as ESRI shapefiles, GeoJSONs, and GeoTIFFs for easy import into GIS software.RivGraph can also return extracted networks as networkx objects for convenient interfacing with the full-featured networkx package (Hagberg et al., 2008). Finally, RivGraph offers a suite of topologic metrics that were specifically designed for river channel network analysis (Tejedor et al., 2015b).},
doi = {10.21105/joss.02952},
journal = {Journal of Open Source Software},
number = 59,
volume = 6,
place = {United States},
year = {Wed Mar 10 00:00:00 EST 2021},
month = {Wed Mar 10 00:00:00 EST 2021}
}
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