Hydrology

Flooding Simulation

Flooding can be easily simulated by r.lake module which fills a lake to a target water level from a given start point or seed raster. The resulting raster map contains cells with values representing lake depth (NULL for all other cells beyond the lake).

Example:

r.lake elevation=dem37 lake=lake37 coordinates=532334,5626968 water_level=1040
../_images/lake37.png

Fig. 45 Flooding visualization.

Note

See also related r.lake.series addon, details in Lesson 4.

Flow accumulation and watersheds

Watersheds and flow accumulation can be derived by r.watershed.

r.watershed -a elevation=dem37 accumulation=faccum37 basin=watersheds37 threshold=1000
../_images/faccum37.png

Fig. 46 Flow accumulation map with legend.

For compute average slope value for each watershed can be used zonal statistics performed using r.stats.zonal:

r.watershed elevation=dem37 accumulation=faccum37 basin=watersheds37 threshold=1000
r.stats.zonal base=watersheds37 cover=slope37 method=average output=watersheds_slope37
r.colors map=watersheds_slope37 color=bgyr
../_images/watersheds_slope37.png

Fig. 47 Average slope value of each watershed.

Erosion modeling

Landscape potential for soil erosion and deposition can be estimated and mapped using Unit Stream Power Based Erosion Deposition model (USPED). In this example we will use uniform land cover (C factor) and soil erodibility (K factor). Install addon r.divergence using g.extension.

r.watershed -a elevation=dem37 accumulation=faccum37 basin=watersheds37 threshold=1000
# topographic sediment transport factor (resolution=1.0)
r.mapcalc expression="sflowtopo37 = pow(faccum37 * 1.0,1.3) * pow(sin(slope37), 1.2)"
# compute sediment flow by combining the rainfall, soil and land
# cover factors with the topographic sediment transport factor.
# we use a constant value of 270 for rainfall intensity factor
# k_factor = 0.1 ; c_factor=0.05
r.mapcalc expression="sedflow37 = 270. * 0.1 * 0.05 * sflowtopo37"
# compute divergence of sediment flow
r.divergence magnitude=sedflow37 direction=aspect37 output=erosion_deposition37

At end we can set custom color table using r.colors:

0% 100:0:100
-100 magenta
-10 red
-1 orange
-0.1 yellow
0 200:255:200
0.1 cyan
1 aqua
10 blue
100 0:0:100
100% black
../_images/divergence37.png

Fig. 48 Landscape potential for soil erosion and deposition.