esurf-5-369-2017.pdf (4.7 MB)
Geomorphometric delineation of floodplains and terraces from objectively defined topographic thresholds
journal contribution
posted on 2017-06-14, 12:05 authored by Fiona J. Clubb, Simon M. Mudd, David T. Milodowski, Declan A. Valters, Louise Slater, Martin D. Hurst, Ajay B. LimayeFloodplain and terrace features can provide information about current and past fluvial processes, including channel response to varying discharge and sediment flux; sediment storage; and the climatic or tectonic history of a catchment. Previous methods of identifying floodplain and terraces from digital elevation models (DEMs) tend to be semi-automated, requiring the input of independent datasets or manual editing by the user. In this study we present a new, fully automated method of identifying floodplain and terrace features based on two thresholds: local gradient, and elevation compared to the nearest channel. These thresholds are calculated statistically from the DEM using quantile-quantile plots and do not need to be set manually for each landscape in question. We test our method against field-mapped floodplain initiation points, published flood hazard maps, and digitised terrace surfaces from seven field sites from the US and one field site from the UK. For each site, we use high-resolution DEMs derived from light detection and ranging (LiDAR) where available, as well as coarser resolution national datasets to test the sensitivity of our method to grid resolution. We find that our method is successful in extracting floodplain and terrace features compared to the field-mapped data from the range of landscapes and grid resolutions tested. The method is most accurate in areas where there is a contrast in slope and elevation between the feature of interest and the surrounding landscape, such as confined valley settings. Our method provides a new tool for rapidly and objectively identifying floodplain and terrace features on a landscape scale, with applications including flood risk mapping, reconstruction of landscape evolution, and quantification of sediment storage routing.
Funding
FJC is funded by the Carnegie Trust for the Universities of Scotland and NERC grant NE/P012922/1. SMM is funded by NERC grant NE/P015905/1 and U.S. Army Research Office contract number W911NF-13-1-0478. DTM is funded by NERC grant NE/K01627X/1 and DAV is funded by NERC grant 510 NE/L501591/1. LJS was supported by a NERC PhD studentship. ABL acknowledges support from the National Center for Earth-Surface Dynamics 2 Synthesis Postdoctoral Program. We are also grateful for additional financial support from the British Society for Geomorphology and the Royal Geographical Society with IBG. We would like to thank Stuart Grieve and Elizabeth Dingle for their help with fieldwork.
History
School
- Social Sciences
Department
- Geography and Environment
Published in
Earth Surface Dynamics DiscussionsPages
1 - 30Citation
CLUBB, F.J. ... et al., 2017. Geomorphometric delineation of floodplains and terraces from objectively defined topographic thresholds. Earth Surface Dynamics Discussions, 5 (3), pp.369-385Publisher
Copernicus Publications © Author(s) 2017Version
- VoR (Version of Record)
Publisher statement
This work is made available according to the conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported (CC BY 3.0) licence. Full details of this licence are available at: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/Acceptance date
2017-04-10Publication date
2017Notes
This work is distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.ISSN
2196-6338eISSN
2196-6338Publisher version
Language
- en