Articles | Volume 9, issue 1
https://doi.org/10.5194/esurf-9-105-2021
https://doi.org/10.5194/esurf-9-105-2021
Research article
 | 
02 Mar 2021
Research article |  | 02 Mar 2021

Computing water flow through complex landscapes – Part 3: Fill–Spill–Merge: flow routing in depression hierarchies

Richard Barnes, Kerry L. Callaghan, and Andrew D. Wickert

Model code and software

Fill-Spill-Merge Source Code Richard Barnes and Kerry Callaghan https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.3755142

Short summary
Existing ways of modeling the flow of water amongst landscape depressions such as swamps and lakes take a long time to run. However, as our previous work explains, depressions can be quickly organized into a data structure – the depression hierarchy. This paper explains how the depression hierarchy can be used to quickly simulate the realistic filling of depressions including how they spill over into each other and, if they become full enough, how they merge into one another.