New tools for quantitative geomorphology: Extraction and interpretation of stream profiles from digital topographic data
GSA Annual Meeting Short Course
9:00 am October 28, 2007 (Please arrive by 8:45 if coming on your own)
Benson Earth Sciences Room 385, University of Colorado
(Building #5, south of football stadium, on this MAP OF CAMPUS )
Empirical data from rivers around the world demonstrate a strong correlation between steepness index (gradient normalized to drainage area) and the rate of rock uplift. This short course was designed to teach participants how to utilize a set of integrated ArcGIS and MATLAB analysis tools to exploit this relationship and extract semi-quantitative estimates of rock uplift rates from digital elevation models (DEMs). We will discuss how to obtain and pre-process raw DEM data; how to use our software to create GIS-based maps of river steepness, concavity, and knickpoint locations; and how to interpret these data for tectonic analysis.
Here are a few documents and web links that will be useful for the short course.
First, here are a few links to useful information about using ArcMap, and obtaining digital topographic data. These links will be particularly useful to those of you who have not used Arc software before.
http://web.mit.edu/gis/www/introarcgis/
http://libinfo.uark.edu/GIS/tutorial.asp
http://arrowsmith410-598.asu.edu/Lectures/Lecture9/DEM_data.html
Next is a set of user guides describing how to prepare digital elevation data and utilize the analysis tools. These user guides are specific to the suite of analysis tools that you will be using during the short course:
And finally (getting to the motivation for all this stuff): here is a paper written by our group that appeared in a GSA special volume in 2006, describing the basis for using river profiles to learn about tectonics, and the methods employed: