The extraction of drainage networks and catchment boundaries from digital elevation models (DEMs) has received considerable attention in recent years and is recognized as a viable alternative to traditional surveys and the manual evaluation of topographic maps. Digital data on the position and characteristics of river networks and catchments are important for the analysis of water resources. GIS tools allow for the combined analysis of digital elevation data and environmental parameters in order to derive this kind of information. In this paper we present an application that selecting river network deriving digital elevation data. In this application, we use catchments as the unit of river abstraction. Many researchers took catchments as the base of hydrographic model because the catchments deriving from digital elevation data can reflect the characteristics of terrain which is the foundation of the river network. In the abstraction of river network, how to keep the structure of the river network after abstraction is the very important issue. This is why we choose the catchments deriving from digital elevation models as the unit of our generalization research. Considering the complication of the structure of river network, in this paper, we only choose three drainage patterns which are dendritic drainage patterns, featherlike drainage patterns, and Parallel drainage patterns as the examples of the research. From the results of research, it can not only keep the density of the river network, but also keep the structure of the river network.

Date Published: 11 November 2008
PDF: 8 pages
Proc. SPIE 7146, Geoinformatics 2008 and Joint Conference on GIS and Built Environment: Advanced Spatial Data Models and Analyses, 71462L (11 November 2008); doi: 10.1117/12.813189

Published in SPIE Proceedings Vol. 7146:
Geoinformatics 2008 and Joint Conference on GIS and Built Environment: Advanced Spatial Data Models and Analyses
Lin Liu; Xia Li; Kai Liu; Xinchang Zhang, Editor(s)