A simple depression-filling method for raster and irregular elevation datasets

Abstract

A variety of methods have been developed to process digital elevation models (DEMs) in order to extract morphological properties of land surfaces. Almost all rely on depression filling to facilitate drainage analysis. This study proposes an intuitive and relatively simple depression-filling algorithm, which is readily applicable to raster and irregular datasets. In this study, topographic data of two watershed areas were provided to test the capability of this new algorithm. The results show that the proposed algorithm can accurately identify the locations of depressions and efficiently assign pseudo flow directions across the filled depressions.