Automated Land Analysis System (ALAS) for applications at a range of spatial scales: Watershed to global

摘要

Recent advances in Digital Elevation Model (DEM) data availability and topographic analysis have enabled us to develop an Automated Land Analysis System (ALAS). ALAS is based on a series of codes which determine topographic and hydrologic characteristics at each pixel, watershed, and each large scale cell. The input requirements are a DEM from any location in the world, its resolution, and array size. A Motif accessed script reads in these inputs and generates a series of data sets which further describe the watershed properties such as flow directions, hydrologic characteristic probability density functions, etc. Postscript files and arrays indicating the FME river networks and each subcatchment, as well as numerous other properties, are produced and catalogued. The motivation behind the development of ALAS is a direct response to the conceptualization of convergent scales between hydrologic and atmospheric models as defined by the World Climate Research Program. This paper highlights ALAS components, capabilities, and provides some discussion on its applications.