The Terrain Analysis System: a tool for hydro‐geomorphic applications

Much progress has been made in extending the hydro-geomorphic modelling toolbox as a result of developments in the field of digital terrain analysis, also known as geomorphometry (Wilson and Gallant, 2000; Pike, 2002). The enhancement of computer technologies and the widespread availability of digital elevation models (DEMs) since the early 1990s have impacted environmental modelling greatly (Pike, 2000). Geographical information systems (GISs) are now widely applied in hydrology and geomorphology to automate basin, hillslope, and stream network analyses. Several commercial GIS packages have incorporated more common terrain attributes (e.g. slope, aspect, curvature, and wetness index) and terrain analysis procedures (e.g. basin and stream network extraction). These software packages are, however, often prohibitively expensive. Furthermore, whilst commercial GIS packages often contain basic terrain analysis capabilities, very few possess the flexibility and advanced functionality needed by researchers. Several terrain analysis packages have been developed for this purpose, e.g. ANUDEM (Hutchinson, 1989), TARDEM/TauDEM (Tarboton, 1997), LandSerf (Wood, 1998), TAPES (Moore et al., 1991; Gallant and Wilson, 1996), LANDLORD (Florinsky et al., 2002), and DiGeM (Conrad, 2002), some of which are freely available. Unfortunately, many terrain analysis packages lack the visualization and general spatial analysis capabilities of a GIS, or have been developed as extensions to existing commercial software. Additionally, although many terrain analysis packages possess the advanced functionality needed by researchers, they are often difficult to use and, therefore, remain inaccessible to nonexperts. The Terrain Analysis System (TAS) was designed to meet the research needs of government and academic scientists while being simple enough in operation to be used for student instruction. TAS is a stand-alone GIS that possesses much of the spatial analysis functionality typically found in GIS packages. However, it is also capable of advanced modelling of catchment processes. The following is a brief description of TAS’s functionality for applications in hydrology and geomorphology.

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