HYDROLOGICAL ANALYSIS

Kaleb G. Negussie
Geo-Spatial Sciences and Technology
Namibia University of Science and Technology
 LEARNING OBJECTIVES

• Understand the logic and usefulness of hydrological analysis using GIS.

• Know the basic structure of any hydrological system and the basic
patterns of flow of surface runoff.
• Differentiate between internal drainage areas and sinks.
• Learn to detect and correct sinks.
• Understand and know how to obtain maps of flow direction and
accumulation.
• Obtain stream and catchment maps in raster and vector formats.
• Establishing channel order.
• Delineate watersheds tributary to key points.
• Interpret and represent any real water system from topographic
information using GIS.

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 CONTENTS

• Fundamentals Of Hydrological Analysis

• Flow directions map

• Flow accumulation map

• Stream And Catchment Grids

• Watershed Processing

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 Basics of Hydrology

• The “Golden Rule” of hydrology.....

“water flows down hill”

– under force of gravity

– BUT, may move up through system via:
• Capillary/passageway action in soil
• hydraulic pressure in groundwater aquifers
• evapotranspiration

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 The hydrological cycle

• Representation of:
– flows
• water
• energy
• suspended/dissolved materials
– inputs/outputs to/from sub-systems
• catchment/watershed
• atmosphere
• water stores (soil, bedrock, channel, etc.)

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 The hydrological cycle

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 Fundamentals Of
Hydrological Analysis

Hydrologic modelling tries to solve part of the water cycle, reproducing

the behaviour of water falling as precipitation to the surface of the ground
(or water melting from snow and ice caps) until it reaches, flowing on and
through the land, the sea (or leaves the study region).

Figure 1: the water cycle. (Evans, 2008)

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 Fundamentals Of
Hydrological Analysis

• GIS structures and operations

guarantee that spatial coherence is
not lost.
– Input, intermediate and output values
preserve topological relationships and
their georeferencing information.
– The user is not required to work with the
entire system; it can determine what Figure 2: Water quality workflow for Bexar County.
processes are taking place and what
outputs are being generated at any
location of the study area.

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 Fundamentals Of
Hydrological Analysis

• Hydrological modelling is based on the

representation of the drainage system
which are patterns formed by rivers,
streams and lakes in a specific drainage
basin (area where precipitation collects
and drains into a common outlet) as shown
in figure 3.
• The representation of these drainage
systems is based on a pattern of defined
structure provided by the same elements
or components:
– Topography
– Basin / Watershed / Catchment / Contributing
area
– Outlet points
– Rivers/Channels

Figure 3: Hydrologic modelling and drainage system

(Nelson and Jones, 1997)

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 Drainage Patterns

Dendritic - there are many contributing streams, which are

then joined together into the tributaries of the main river.
Parallel - pattern of rivers caused by steep slopes.
Trellis - river flows along a valley, smaller tributaries feed into it
from the steep slopes on the sides of mountains.
Rectangular - develops on rocks that are of approximately
uniform resistance to erosion. Tributaries join larger streams at
right angles.
Parallel
 Spatial representations

• Lumped vs Distributed models...

Rf
A
Int
OVF1
Rf ET Ovf
S1
OVF2
S2 TF
C TF1 OVFn
P1 Sn
TF2 DTM
Ro
P2 TFn etc.
Q
Pn Q

lumped 2D distributed 3D distributed

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 Spatial representations

• Lumped vs Distributed models...

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 Spatial representations

• Black-box vs White-box models...

I I
ET A

** Int Inf C
* Ovf
o * ****
**
Cn S TF P Gw
i

O O

Black-box White-box

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 Role of DTMs

• Surface shape determines water behaviour

– characterise surface using DTM
• slope
• aspect
• (altitude)
– delineate drainage system:
• catchment boundary (watershed)
• sub-catchments
• stream network
– quantify catchment variables
• soil moisture, etc.
• flow times... catchment response

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 More spatial variables

• Other key catchment variables:

– soils
• type and association
• derived characteristics
– geology
• type
• derived characteristics
– land use
• vegetation cover
• management practices
– artificial drainage
• storm drains/sewers

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 Catchment
inputs/outputs

• Inputs:
– precipitation (rain or snow)
– suspended/dissolved load
– pollutants (point source/non-point source)
• Outputs:
– stream discharge
– water vapour (evapotranspiration)
– groundwater recharge/transfer
– suspended/dissolved load
– pollutants

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 GIS-based catchment
models

• Use data layers to represent:

– catchment characteristics
– inputs and outputs
– water stored in system
– flows within system
• Calculations between layers used to:
– represent relationships
– model processes
– predict RESPONSE

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 Creating a hydrologically
correct DEM

DEM

FLOWDIRECTION

SINK

Are there any

Yes sinks?
No

FILL

Delineate watersheds Delineate stream network

WATERSHED BASIN FLOWACCUMULATION

Threshold FLOWACCUMULATION output

streamnet = con (flowacc > 100, 1)

STREAMLINE STREAMLINK STREAMORDER

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 Fundamentals Of
Hydrological Analysis

• The first task in any hydrological Flow Direction Raster

study is to model the drainage

system. Flow Accumulation Raster

• The procedure generally follows

Stream definition
a similar structure
• This is a geometric analysis based Link and Catchment Grids
on the principles that govern the
movement of surface water for Conversion of Streams and Catchments to Features
the simulation of hydrological
behaviour from a DEM. Additional Applications

Figure 4: Procedure for modelling a drainage system

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 Hydro Dem, Flow Direction
And Flow Accumulation Maps

Flow Direction Grid

• Base information for any GIS hydrological
analysis will be the DEM, which is used to
determine the behavior of the flow of runoff
over the ground surface.

• Figure 5 shows an example of determining flow

direction in a cell. In this case, flow from the
central cell (with an elevation of 64) would
move to the cell on the right, because it is the
cell of lowest elevation (it has an elevation of Figure 5: Finding flow direction in a cell..
56), so that slope is maximum

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 Flow Direction Grid

Grid cell y 1 0 0

0.5 0.5 0

0 1 0

0 0.6 0.4

0 0.6 0.4

Influence function of grid cell y

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 Hydro Dem, Flow Direction
And Flow Accumulation Maps

Hydro DEM
• When working with a raw, uncorrected DEM, it
is possible to find cells where flow is
interrupted (That is, cells whose immediate
neighbors are all higher in elevation, so that
water will not have an outlet (cannot flow
upstream). Figure 6: Representation of a sink.

• This is usually an error, often due to the

resolution of the DEM.

• We can apply a process for filling sinks, in

which we assign the same elevation to the sink
cell as the lowest cell of its immediate
environment.
Figure 7: Sink fill process.

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 Hydro Dem, Flow Direction
And Flow Accumulation Maps

Flow Accumulation Grid

• next step in the modelling process of the

drainage system.
• In this raster layer the value of each cell
refers to the number of cells that fall
above it in the drainage system defined
(Flow Direction Grid).
• the number of cells that discharge their
runoff either directly or indirectly on it.
• this raster is ultimately a measure of the
tributary area to each cell. Figure 8: Flow Direction Grid.

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 Stream And
Catchment Grids

Stream Grid
• The Stream Map: raster layer where channel pixels are assigned some cell value
(usually 1) and all remaining pixels are left as no data (value NODATA).
• Pixels belong to channels where the contributing area is large enough to
generate flow for a natural channel.
• We can use generic GIS raster tools to create this map.
– reclassification of cell values or conditional calculation tool
• In order to extract stream channels by means of reclassification:
– Decide a minimum flow accumulation value for considering a cell as a channel.
– Reclassify our raster into two sets of values:
• pixels above the accumulation threshold will be assigned 1,
• and below they will be assigned NODATA value

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 Stream And
Catchment Grids
Link Grid
• After generating a stream map in raster format we can
divide each stream into sections.
• The Link Grid raster establishes a separate numbering
for different stretches in a channel.
– cells belonging to the same channel section receive the
same value,
– cells belonging to different sections have different values.

• Separation of a stream into links will take place at points

of connection between the channels.
Figure 9: Link Grid.
• The size of these sections will be closely related to the
number of cells that we set as flow accumulation
threshold on the raster of accumulated flow to identify
the channels.

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 Stream And
Catchment Grids

Flow Lenght Grid

• The value of each cell is the length of the flow of
runoff downstream or upstream of it. In the first
case, upstream length is calculated as the length of
flow path from one cell to the sink where it ends or
the exit point at the edge of the study area.

• Ultimately, the Flow Length tool will sum distances

Figure 10: Flow Length tool.
between cell centres along the route of flow. This
distance will depend on cell size, being different
depending on the direction of travel.

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 Stream And
Catchment Grids
Cachment/Basin Grid
• Basin grid consists of a division of the
drainage system of study into a number of
areas separate from the hydrological point
of view.
• That is, areas with different outlets.
• In this delineation of watersheds the basin
boundaries (ridge lines) are identified that
separate basins. This is done by locating
Figure 11: Drainage system. flow outlets (Pour Points) along the entire
boundary of the study area (limit of the
DEM) and sinks.

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 Stream And
Catchment Features
Basin Features
• Vector conversion of the basins is a simple conversion from a discrete raster to
polygonal elements. We can simply use tools to convert to polygons discussed
earlier in the course.

Figure 12: Raster to polygon conversion.

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 Stream And
Catchment Features
Stream Features

• Vectorizing channels into a layer requires not

only to simply trace polylines through the cells
that make up the channel. In this case, the
conversion also requires an adequate
description of the flow directions for the new
elements.

• The Stream to Feature tool performs an optimal Figure 13: Raster to polygon conversion..

vectorization of stream channels, as it considers

the flow directions when using this process in
support of the flow direction raster.

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 Stream And
Catchment Features

Stream Ordering
• Stream ordering is one practical application of stream vectorization,
which is used primarily for watershed management. Stream 1 3
ordering consists of the creation of a hierarchy associated with the
different sections of the river network. 1
2 1
• first-order channels are considered those at the beginning of the 2
1
network, headwater streams. The confluence/convergence of 1
1
channels of lower order will generate the highest order channels
(second order, third order, fourth order, etc.) according to rules that 2 1
1
vary depending on the method applied.
2
1 1 1
• Mostly in GIS, Stream Orders allow us to order channels according
to two methods: Figure 9: Stream Orders.
– Strahler method
– Shreve method

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 Stream Ordering

Strahler
Method.

Shreve
Method.

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 Watershed Processing

• As a practical application we will show how to obtain a drainage basin for locations
on the ground.

• The Watershed tool allows us to obtain the contributing area that drains onto a
number of locations or areas in the field. To do this, upstream areas are sought in
the map of flow directions.

This tool requires as input a raster of

flow directions and a layer that
defines the outlet points. The raster of
flow directions will be used as a basis
for setting hydrological connections
between different areas in the map
and to find the area upstream.

Figure 14: Contributing area for runoff drainage

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 Summary

• DEMs are important for modelling the

hydrological cycle
– water flows down hill
– other variables
• Need to create hydrologically correct DEMs
for accurate modelling

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