Radke’s cheat sheet for Hydrologic analysis

 
 

 
 
 

 
 
 
 

 
 
 

 
 
 
 

 
 
 

 
 
 
 

 
 
 
 1) Acquire  or  Build  a  DEM    

 
2) Errors  in  DEMs  are  usually  classified  as  either  sinks  or  peaks.    Errors  such  as  
these,  especially  sinks,  should  be  removed  before  attempting  to  derive  any  
surface  information.  Sinks,  being  areas  of  internal  drainage,  prevent  
downslope  flow  routing  of  water.    Sinks  should  be  filled  to  ensure  proper  
delineation  of  basins  and  streams.  If  the  sinks  are  not  filled,  a  derived  
drainage  network  may  be  discontinuous.  
 
3) The  Fill  tool  uses  the  equivalents  of  several  tools,  such  as  Focal  Flow,  Flow  
Direction,  Sink,  Watershed,  and  Zonal  Fill,  to  locate  and  fill  sinks.  The  tool  
iterates  until  all  sinks  within  the  specified  z  limit  are  filled.  As  sinks  are  filled,  
others  can  be  created  at  the  boundaries  of  the  filled  areas,  which  are  
removed  in  the  next  iteration.  
 

 
 
 

 
 
4)    The  tool  can  also  be  used  to  remove  peaks,  which  are  spurious  cells  with  
elevation  greater  than  would  be  expected  given  the  trend  of  the  surrounding  
surface.  

 
 
 
 

 
 
 

 
 
 
 

 
 
 

 
 
5)  Flow  Direction  creates  a  raster  of  flow  direction  from  each  cell  to  its  steepest  
downslope  neighbor.  
 
 
 

 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
The  output  of  the  Flow  Direction  tool  is  an  integer  raster  whose  values    
range  from  1  to  255.  The  values  for  each  direction  from  the  center  are:  

 
6)  I  Tested  for  any  sinks  but  none  remained.  
 

 
 
7) Flow Accumulation Creates  a  raster  of  accumulated  flow  into  each  cell.  A  weight  
factor  can  optionally  be  applied.  The  result  of  Flow  Accumulation  is  a  raster  of  
accumulated  flow  to  each  cell,  as  determined  by  accumulating  the  weight  for  all  cells  
that  flow  into  each  downslope  cell.  
Snap Pour Point: Snaps  pour  points  to  the  cell  of  highest  flow  accumulation  within  
a  specified  distance.  The  Snap  Pour  Point  tool  is  used  to  ensure  the  selection  of  
points  of  high  accumulated  flow  when  delineating  drainage  basins  using  the  
Watershed  tool.  Snap  Pour  Point  will  search  within  a  snap  distance  around  the  
specified  pour  points  for  the  cell  of  highest  accumulated  flow  and  move  the  pour  
point  to  that  location.  If  the  input  pour  point  data  is  a  point  feature  class,  it  will  be  
converted  to  a  raster  internally  for  processing.  The  output  is  an  integer  raster  when  
the  original  pour  point  locations  have  been  snapped  to  locations  of  higher  
accumulated  flow.  
 
Use  the  results  of  the  Flow Accumulation
model to create (interactively by hand)
the shapefile of Snap Pour Points. However,
I would not really do this very well with the
FLOAT data type option. Use the INTEGER option.
It produces a better stream network.

 
 
 
 

 
 
 

 
 
 
 

 
 
 

 
You  can  then  delineate  Basins  using  the  Basin  tool.    
 

 
 
 
 

 
 
 

 
 
 
You  can  then  Vectorize  the  basin  boundaries.  

 
 
 

 
 
 
 

 
 
 

 
 
 
 
From  the  Flow Accumulation model create a set of very high resolution stream vectors
using the Stream to Feature tool. This final model is basically everywhere water is
going to flow over that surface.