RiverTools

This river tools repository contains scripts for generating GIS layers that represent rivers. The current tools include scripts to layout river centerlines and cross sections. These methods were conceived in collaboration between the United States Forest Service, ESSA Technologies and North Arrow Research. These scripts are licensed as open source under GNU Version 2.0. They use open source numerical and GIS libraries and read and write data using ShapeFiles and GeoTiffs.

The centerline and cross section scripts are both command line tools. If you just want to run the tools then refer to the Installation section below on how to use PIP. This will install the necessary Python packages to run the code.

Citation

McKean, J., Nagel, D., Tonina, D., Bailey, P., Wright, C.W., Bohn, C., Nayegandhi, A., 2009. Remote sensing of channels and riparian zones with a narrow-beam aquatic-terrestrial lidar. Remote Sensing 1:1065-1096. doi:10.3390/rs1041065.

Installation

pip install git+https://github.com/RBTDevelopmentGroup/rivertools

Centerline

The centerline tool identifies line down the middle of a channel polygon layer. It works for both single channels and channels with islands. A thalweg, or some crude representation of the main thread of the channel is required. This doesn't need to be accurate and can simply be a single line that roughly approximates the flow the channel. Refer to the centerline tool documentation for more detail.

usage: centerline [-h] [--islands islands] [--smoothing SMOOTHING] [--noviz]
                  river thalweg centerline

positional arguments:
  river                 Path to the river shape file. Donuts will be ignored.
  thalweg               Path to the thalweg shapefile.
  centerline            Path to the desired output centerline shapefile.

optional arguments:
  -h, --help            show this help message and exit
  --islands             Path to the islands shapefile.
  --smoothing SMOOTHING
                        smoothing "s" factor for the curve. (default=0/None)
  --noviz               Disable result visualization (faster).
  --density             Spacing between river vertex points after densification. (default=0.5)

Cross Sections

The cross section tool generates transects perpendicular to a longitudinal line down the channel. It is intended to be used after the centerline to produce cross sections down a channel, spanning to the edge of a channel polygon layer. The spacing of the cross sections is user-defined, as is the sampling distance of elevations along each cross section. Several common measurements are calculated and stored in the attribute table of the output cross section ShapeFile. Refer to the cross section tool documentation for more detail.

usage: crosssections [-h] [--points] [--noviz]
                     river islands centerline dem crosssections separation
                     stationsep

positional arguments:
  river          Path to the river shape file. Donuts will be ignored.
  islands        Path to the islands shapefile.
  centerline     Path to the centerline shapefile
  dem            Path to the DEM Raster (used for metric calculation)
  crosssections  Path to the desired output crosssections
  separation     Downstream spacing between cross sections
  stationsep     Lateral spacing between vertical DEM measurements

optional arguments:
  -h, --help     show this help message and exit
  --points       Generate points at separation and stationsep (slower)
  --noviz        Disable result visualization (faster)