Workflow Narrative

River Corridor Health Assessment

Problem It Solves

Which river reaches are stable versus at-risk, and where should restoration action be prioritized?

Who It Is For

Watershed restoration teams, river health analysts, and permit support consultants.

Primary User

Watershed councils, conservation authorities, and environmental consulting groups.

What It Does

Derives erosion-pressure context from terrain.
Scores stream reaches by sampled corridor pressure.
Emits restoration-priority line outputs for intervention planning.

How It Works

Calculates per-pixel erosion pressure from slope and local roughness terms.
Samples stream vertices over the erosion raster and derives reach metrics (including high quantiles).
Converts reach scores into health classes and restoration action categories.
Indicative formula: erosion ~= a*slope_norm + b*roughness_norm; health ~= 1 - mean(erosion_samples_along_reach).

Why It Wins

Combines raster pressure context and attributed reach-level restoration outputs in one workflow.

Typical Buying Trigger

A watershed plan needs rapid reach triage with GIS-ready outputs for restoration budgeting.

Typical Presets

fast for rapid watershed screening.
balanced for default corridor scoring.
conservative for roughness-sensitive erosion scoring.

Inputs

Parameter	Optional	Description
dem	no	Digital elevation model used as the terrain reference surface.
streams	no	Vector stream network used for corridor health and restoration targeting.
profile: fast \| balanced \| conservative	no	Processing profile controlling sensitivity, quality strictness, and runtime tradeoffs.

Outputs

Parameter	Type	Description
erosion_pressure	GeoTIFF	Erosion pressure raster for river corridor condition assessment.
corridor_confidence	GeoTIFF	Confidence surface for river corridor health interpretation.
stream_health_score	GeoPackage	Stream-reach health score output summarizing corridor condition.
restoration_zones	GeoPackage	Priority vector polygons highlighting restoration intervention zones.
summary	JSON	Machine-readable summary report containing run metadata, QA diagnostics, and key metrics.
html_report	HTML	Human-readable customer-facing report generated from the summary contract for stakeholder review and QA traceability.

Python Example

import whitebox_workflows as wbw

wbe = wbw.WbEnvironment(include_pro=True, tier="pro")

erosion, confidence, health, restoration, summary = wbe.river_corridor_health_assessment(
    dem="data/dem.tif",
    streams="data/streams.gpkg",
    profile="balanced",
    output_prefix="output/river_health",
)

print(erosion)
print(confidence)
print(health)
print(restoration)
print(summary)

License Notice

Use of this function requires a license for Whitebox Workflows Professional (WbW-Pro). Please visit www.whiteboxgeo.com to purchase a license.

Project Links

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