I'd like to find out if anyone has made use of TauDEM for Hydrological Modeling? I'm keen to find out if its possible to determine the following using TauDEM:
Peter, I presume you have read the documentation and found no explicit reference to your needs? Or whether anyone else has managed to use the tools to get at that information?
I've finally got started with TauDEM and emailed Prof Tarboton to confirm workflows and functionality. TauDEM at this stage is unable to determine the following characteristics that I listed above. I have still found that TauDEM is beneficial due to its multi-thread processing capability. I have incorporated TauDEM into my current ArcHydro python models to replace certain ArcHydro functions. Although ArcHydro is 64bit, its not multi-threaded so its not capable of using more that one core of your processor. TauDEM is multi-threaded and utilizes all the cores available. The functions that take the longest to process are Flow Direction and Flow Accumulation using the D8 flow routing algorithm. These functions are available within TauDEM and drastically reduce the processing time to complete the following, especially in very large study areas. I'm currently still comparing the results generated by TauDEM with those produced by ArcHydro.
I used TauDEM about 10 to 12 years ago for the first time, and I really liked how fast it processed the data, and stepped you through the process, it made the process and flow easy.
Indeed, TauDEM is exceptionally fast. its the primary reason why I'm currently looking into using it to derive hydrological characteristics as my study areas are get larger and larger. My current project that I'm working on is with South Sudan, Ethiopia and Kenya, where my DSM is over 500 million cells. TauDEM is not as feature rich as ArcHydro so I'm trying to combine the two applications to achieve the most efficient solution. TauDEM to the best of my knowledge doenst deal with non-dendritic systems as it tries to fill the DSM until it flows out the lowest position. I'm currently discussing the following with Prof Tarboton to see if there is any work around.
Peter, would you be able to layout examples of combined workflows? Perhaps even sharing scripts? But if not scripts, at least bulleted lists of workflow steps?
