Mossman River Adjoint Catchments - Mossman adjoint catchment areas from a 30 m digital elevation model

Brief description

This dataset is the Mossman River adjoint catchment areas created using ArcHydro 1.3, with a stream definition threshold of 5,000 cells. The Mossman River catchment is located in the Wet Tropics region of northeast Queensland Australia. Stream definition was determined from a flow accumulation grid which was generated from a 30 m digital elevation model (S. R. Januchowski, R. L. Pressey, J. VanDerWal and A. Edwards. 2010. Characterizing errors in digital elevation models and estimating the financial costs of accuracy. International Journal of Geographical Information Science. in press.) Purpose: This data set has been designed to inform conservation and management planning and decision making exercise related to freshwater ecosystems. The sub catchments have been delineated from a 30 m digital elevation model, and therefore, are suitable for addressing catchment management questions at a regional scale. History: This dataset is the Mossman River adjoint catchment areas created using ArcHydro 1.3, with a stream definition threshold of 5,000 cells. Stream definition was determined from a flow accumulation grid which was generated from a 30 m digital elevation model (DEM). The Adjoint Catchments are the aggregated upstream catchments from the "Catchment" feature class. For each catchment that is not a head catchment, a polygon representing the whole upstream area draining to its inlet point is constructed and stored in a feature class. The DEM was created using a combination of digital topographic contour lines and point data derived from the SRTM high-resolution digital topographic database (http://www2.jpl.nasa.gov/srtm/). The specifications and accuracy of this model are reported in S. R. Januchowski, R. L. Pressey, J. VanDerWal and A. Edwards. 2010. Characterizing errors in digital elevation models and estimating the financial costs of accuracy. International Journal of Geographical Information Science. in press. The topographic contour data had a 20 m positional accuracy (vertical and horizontal).The DEM had a vertical accuracy of 17.53 m in higher-relief areas and 6.31 in low-relief areas.

Contributors

Stephanie Januchowski - James Cook University