An evaluation of flow-routing algorithms for calculating contributing area on regular grids

Prescott, Alexander B.; Pelletier, Jon D.; Chataut, Satya; Ananthanarayan, Sriram

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/esurf-13-239-2025

Articles | Volume 13, issue 2

https://doi.org/10.5194/esurf-13-239-2025

© Author(s) 2025. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

https://doi.org/10.5194/esurf-13-239-2025

© Author(s) 2025. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Articles | Volume 13, issue 2

Research article

|

19 Mar 2025

Research article |

| 19 Mar 2025

An evaluation of flow-routing algorithms for calculating contributing area on regular grids

Alexander B. Prescott, Jon D. Pelletier, Satya Chataut, and Sriram Ananthanarayan

Data sets

Online repository for code and data used in: An evaluation of flow-routing algorithms for calculating contributing area on regular grids (1.0) Prescott, A. B. and Pelletier, J. D. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.10947079

Model code and software

Online repository for code and data used in: An evaluation of flow-routing algorithms for calculating contributing area on regular grids (1.0) Prescott, A. B. and Pelletier, J. D. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.10947079

Short summary

Many Earth surface processes are controlled by the spatial pattern of surface water flow. We review commonly used methods for predicting such spatial patterns in digital landform models and document the pros and cons of commonly used methods. We propose a new method that is designed to minimize those limitations and show that it works well in a variety of test cases.