Articles | Volume 9, issue 1
https://doi.org/10.5194/esurf-9-105-2021
© Author(s) 2021. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
https://doi.org/10.5194/esurf-9-105-2021
© Author(s) 2021. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
Research article
| 
02 Mar 2021
Research article |
| 02 Mar 2021
| 02 Mar 2021
Computing water flow through complex landscapes – Part 3: Fill–Spill–Merge: flow routing in depression hierarchies
Richard Barnes
CORRESPONDING AUTHOR
Energy & Resources Group (ERG), University of California, Berkeley, USA
Electrical Engineering & Computer Science, University of California, Berkeley, USA
Berkeley Institute for Data Science (BIDS), University of California, Berkeley, USA
Kerry L. Callaghan
Department of Earth & Environmental Sciences, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, USA
Saint Anthony Falls Laboratory, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, USA
Andrew D. Wickert
Department of Earth & Environmental Sciences, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, USA
Saint Anthony Falls Laboratory, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, USA
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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.
Existing ways of modeling the flow of water amongst landscape depressions such as swamps and...
