Murray River flow direction grid

Brief description

This dataset is the Murray River flow direction grid created using ArcHydro 1.3, with a stream definition threshold of 5,000 cells. The flow direction grid is generated from a digital elevation model and computes the corresponding flow direction grid. The values in the cells of the flow direction grid indicate the direction of the steepest descent from that cell. This dataset 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 exercises related freshwater ecosystems. The flow direction grid was created using a filled 30 m digital elevation model. Therefore, this flow direction grid is suitable for delineating catchments or addressing hydrological questions at a regional scale and is applicable only to the Murray River catchment in north Queensland Australia.
History:
This dataset is the Murray River flow direction grid created using ArcHydro 1.3, with a stream definition threshold of 5,000 cells. The flow direction grid is generated from a digital elevation model and computes the corresponding flow direction grid. The values in the cells of the flow direction grid indicate the direction of the steepest descent from that cell. The DEM used to create the flow direction grid was created using a combination of 50m 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