This tool is used to generate a flow pointer grid (i.e. flow direction) using the stochastic Rho8 (J. Fairfield and P. Leymarie, 1991) algorithm. Like the D8 flow algorithm (d8_pointer), Rho8 is a single-flow-direction (SFD) method because the flow entering each grid cell is routed to only one downslope neighbour, i.e. flow divergence is not permitted. The user must specify the name of a digital elevation model (DEM) file (dem) that has been hydrologically corrected to remove all spurious depressions and flat areas (breach_depressions_least_cost, fill_depressions). The output of this tool (output) is often used as the input to the Rho8FlowAccumulation tool.

By default, the Rho8 flow pointers use the following clockwise, base-2 numeric index convention:

...
641281
3202
1684

Notice that grid cells that have no lower neighbours are assigned a flow direction of zero. In a DEM that has been pre-processed to remove all depressions and flat areas, this condition will only occur along the edges of the grid. If the pointer file contains ESRI flow direction values instead, the esri_pntr parameter must be specified.

Grid cells possessing the NoData value in the input DEM are assigned the NoData value in the output image.

Memory Usage

The peak memory usage of this tool is approximately 10 bytes per grid cell.

References

Fairfield, J., and Leymarie, P. 1991. Drainage networks from grid digital elevation models. Water Resources Research, 27(5), 709-717.

See Also

Rho8FlowAccumulation, d8_pointer, fd8_pointer, DInfPointer, breach_depressions_least_cost, fill_depressions

Function Signature

def rho8_pointer(self, dem: Raster, esri_pntr: bool = False) -> Raster: ...

Project Links

WbW Homepage User Manual Support WbW