Riverscapes Tools
The Riverscapes Consortium has developed standards for working with riverscapes related data. This site lists tools that conform with these standards and produce data in compliant riverscapes projects. Several of the tools below were developed by Utah State University and North Arrow Research, two of the core developers within the Riverscapes Constrium. These tools are also documented on this site. Tools contributed by others are also listed here and link to the external documentation on other sites.
The Riverscapes Consortium is committed to supporting the development of tools that meet the consortium's standards, and to providing a platform for the distribution of these tools. Email support@riverscapes.freshdesk.com if you have a tool that you would like listed here.
Learn more about: tool grades and riverscapes standards and compliance.
Professional Grade Tools
The Riverscapes Consortium uses the Application Readiness Levels to discriminate tools. The following list comprises those tools that have been designated as professional grade.
Riverscapes Context
Discovers, downloads and compiles together disparate datasets that are helpful for contextualizing riverscape health.
Channel Area
Genterates polygons representing the spatial extent of the drainage network within a watershed by buffering flow lines and combining with waterbody polygons.
TauDEM
A riverscapes compliant wrapper around the Terrain Analysis Using Digital Elevation Models (TauDEM) is a suite of tools developed by David Tarboton at the Utah State University Hydrology Research Group.
VBET
The Valley Bottom Extraction Tool (VBET) identifies the valley bottom of a riverscape, and dividies it into geomorphic units (channel, active floodplain, and inactive floodplain).
Anthropologic Context
Derives anthropologic context, such as roads, rail, canals, land use itensity from a variety of publicly available data sources.
Confinement
Quantifies the amount that reaches are confined by valley margins, outputting left and right confined margins as well as constriction ratios.
Riparian Condition Assessment Tool
Quantifies the current and historic riparian vegetation and the different ways in which it has evolved over time.
Hydrological Context
Uses regional regression curves to calculate key discharges for assessing riverscapes health.
Metric Engine
Synthesizes metrics from all the other production grade tools in the waterfall and combines them into a single, wholistic dataset for looking at riverscapes health.
BRAT
The Beaver Restoration Assessment Tool (BRAT) is used to assess the potential for beaver restoration in a riverscape.
GCD
The Geomorphic Change Detection software, measures differences between elevation rasters while accounting for uncertainty.
The Waterfall
The Riverscapes Consortium production-grade tools listed above can be chained together to create a "waterfall" that produces a riverscapes project. The Riverscapes Context tool is the first tool in the waterfall, and it is used to create a series of riverscapes projects focused on different aspects of riverscape health. All models depend on this initial Riverscapes Context project that collects together the prerequisite national datasets for a given watershed. The dependencies of the other tools are shown in the waterfall diagram below.
The Riverscapes Metric Engine synthesizes metrics from the other tools to create a comprehensive assessment of riverscape health based on Discrete and Integrated Geographic Objects (DGO and IGO respectively).
Support
The Riverscapes Consortium is committed to supporting users and consumers of these tool outputs. We encourage questions regarding tools and their use through our online support forum here. A free GitHub account is required to post to the discussion board but you can browse without an account.