Thoughts on Fill Sinks Issue: No Results, Sometimes Error

ClaireRose

I'm working to create a depressionless DEM so that I can autodelineate watersheds based on it.

However, I'm a bit confused about the fill sinks process. I've been advised to just use the "fill sinks" tool in the ArcHydro toolbox, without regards to identifying or limiting the sinks. However, when I run this tool, either I get an error, or nothing at all happens, and no results are posted, and no new layer is created. What should I be seeing? I'm assuming it should fill all sinks since I didn't specify a threshold or create a deranged polygon. And I'm assuming after it fills sinks, it's supposed to at least create another layer, but I see nothing and nothing happens, unless I get an error, which is equally likely- it seems random.

I'm trying to use this as a model: http://webhelp.esri.com/arcgisdesktop/9.3/index.cfm?TopicName=Creating_a_depressionless_DEM , however it seems very out-dated in its terminology. For instance, it refers to the "Sink function" and the "Watershed function", whereas in my ArcHydro toolbox, I do not see anything like that. I see "Fill sinks", "sink evaluation", "sink prescreening", and "sink selection". Which of these do you think it's referring to?

By the way, here are some details about the data I'm working on, in case it will help:

I have 3 different raster layers that are DEMs- would I need to somehow merge them into one to make this work?
I did not recondition my DEM because I want to try first without burning the streams into the DEM (it's created from LiDAR).
Also I should note that I'm working out of the Toolbox rather than the ArcHydro Toolbar, which won't recognize any of my DEMs.

Any help would be greatly appreciated, thank you!

Claire

MarkBoucher

Claire,

I rarely used the toolbox for fill sinks. I just tried and I also got an error. When I run it form the toolbar, it works fine. Will it work from the toolbar for you? I ran it from tool box and it worked on this second try. Maybe there is a setting that gets set using the toolbar that the toolbox doesn't set. (?)

The advice is good. You don't have to specify the fill depth. Just fill all sinks.

.. or nothing at all happens, and no results are posted, and no new layer is created. ...

If it seems to run successfully, refresh the folder in the Catalog to see if it is there. Sometimes this has happened to me especially when creating str and strlnk.

I see "Fill sinks", "sink evaluation", "sink prescreening", and "sink selection". Which of these do you think it's referring to?

Just use "Fill sinks"
If you are just trying to see what streams they will produce without reconditioning, you could do it without merging the rasters (you'll have to analyze them one at a time.) If water would flow from one to the other, eventually you would want merge them.