Drainage Area Characterization

[SamC1]

How would one generate elevation vs cumulative storage area data for a drainage area at the (i) min elevation, (ii) max elevation, and (iii) all integer elevations in between the min and max ? Neither slicing options would yield such output - unless I break down the slice increment to a very small interval (let's say 0.01 ft) and manually post-process the EAV output [which doesn't seem feasible for a large model...] Is the Drainage Area Characterization the right tool to use for this task? Please advise.

Example
Drainage Area Min Elev: 3.77 ft
Drainage Area Max Elev: 7.43 ft
Want EAV at 3.77 ft / 4 ft / 5 ft / 6 ft / 7 ft / 7.43 ft

[ChristineDartiguenave · Accepted solution]

The tool is not designed to allow the user to specify the elevations of the slices.
You could work around it by running first the tool for 1 slice to get EAV at the bottom and at the top and then edit the DEM so that the minimum elevation is always an integer as follows:

1. Run the ZonalStatistics tool to create a raster with minimum elevation in each zone (i.e. drainage area).
2. Compute a grid = int(ZonalMinGrid)+ + 1
3. Use the Con tool in Spatial Analyst and replace in your input dem the cells that are strictly less than int(zonalmin) + 1 with int(zonalmin), so that the lowest elevation in each zone is an integer.
4.Run the Drainage Area Characterization tool using that modified DEM and set the slice increment to 1ft.

Christine Dartiguenave
Esri Water Resources Team