Tarsier journal: Carmel Watershed

This page is intended to record a journal of data processing and analysis steps take by various folks in the Carmel Watershed using Tarsier. Its half scratch-pad, and half-tutorial.

Goals

• Get a watershed model up and running for the Carmel Watershed.

Obtaining a DEM

• Follow steps in Tarsier tutorial: Raster data and Tarsier tutorial: Raster resampler
  • Select a 1/3" NED DEM i.e. about 10 meters.
  • Select ArcGRID
  • Download data in GridFloat format
  • Out of date? See below
    • Change extension of main file from .flt to .raw
    • Open .raw file in Tarier, use the .hdr file to fill in properties
  • Open .flt file directly within Tarsier
  • Save as Tarsier raster .tra
  • Convert raster from lat/long to UTM using raster resampler

Creating a Visualization of the Watershed

• Follow steps in Tarsier tutorial: Renderer, Adding Agents, Tarsier tutorial: Simple fly-through and Tarsier: Importing shapefiles
  • Open a renderer veiw
  • Open Carmel 10m raster as well was terrain file made following renderer tutorial
  • Explore the terrain using the flight keys
  • Add cams to make a simple flight of what was thought to be whole length of the Carmel River
  • Add label agents and realize the flight began in Cachagua Creek instead of the Carmel River... Oops.
  • Redo the flight to follow the Carmel River
  • Adjust the ins and outs of the cams to make the flight smother (this trick is not found on the flight wiki page yet... ill do that soon)
  • Use a more aesthetic color scheme (maybe make a tutorial on making and saving color schemes?)
  • Adjust the timing of the flight to be under a minute
  • Record the flight, view the flight and make necessary changes
  • Add vector data representing water in the channel
    • I used Arc to make the vector data because I did not know how to do it in Tarsier

Modeling

• Dam buster / Pit filler form
  • Ran a pit filler for 10m Carmel Watershed raster
    • Open 10m raster in DEM usee control
    • Keep default settings
    • Click "Init"
    • Click "Mark pits"
    • View and save HydroDEM, DiffDEM and Working DEM
    • Fill pits at a fill amount of 0.1m
    • Pit filler ran for around 10 hours
  • Obtained a filled raster
  • The difference raster looked good. There were a few spots within the channel that filled up to over 2m. The Los Padres and San Clemente reservoirs filled up to around 5m. There were some random spots in the hills of the watershed that filled up to more than 8m.

• Watershed form
  • I ran some calculations with my filled DEM even though I will most likely make a better filled DEM at a later time
  • I was able to get a ptr raster, a net ptr raster, an upslope area raster, a stream raster, a code raster, a catch raster, an scatch raster and river network data. I could not successfully get catchment centroids data.

Links

• Tarsier tutorials