TauDEM Tools

TauDEM (Terrain analysis using Digital Elevation Models) is a set of Digital Elevation Model (DEM) analysis tools developed by David Tarboton and students and colleagues in his group over the years with support from a variety of sponsors, whose support is gratefully acknowledged. These tools are targeted at extraction of information useful for hydrologic modeling and analysis from DEMs.

The TauDEM Toolbox currently provides the following capability:

• Pit removal by flooding to ensure hydraulic connectivity within the watershed.

• Computation of flow directions and slopes using single and multiple flow direction methods.

• Contributing area using single and multiple flow direction methods.

• Multiple methods for the delineation of channel networks including geomorphology-based methods sensitive to spatially variable drainage density.

• Objective methods for determination of the channel network delineation threshold based on stream drop analysis.

• Delineation of watersheds and subwatersheds draining to each stream segment and association between watershed and segment attributes for setting up hydrologic models.

• Specialized functions for terrain analysis, including:

• Slope over specific catchment area ratio which is the inverse of the wetness index.

• Distances down to streams and up to ridges along flow directions measured horizontally, vertically, in a straight line, or following the topographic profile.

• Upslope dependence function to map the locations upslope where activities have an effect on a downslope location.

• Decaying accumulation that evaluates upslope contribution subject to decay or attenuation.

• Concentration limited accumulation.

• Transport limited accumulation.

• Reverse accumulation.

• Avalanche runout.

• Average slope.

Toolsets