ScrollStats

An open-source python library to calculate and extract morphometrics from scrollbar floodplains.

For further reading on the rationale behind ScrollStats and practical examples demonstrating how to use ScrollStats, check out the documentation here: https://scrollstats.readthedocs.io/en/latest

Introduction

Scroll bar floodplains, often characterized by a series undulating ridges and swales, exhibit a distinct geomorphic signature that can be seen in high-resolution digital elevation models (DEMs). These fine-scale topographic undulations reflect the dynamic balance between sediment deposition and erosional scouring associated with the fluvial processes along the inner bank at the time of their formation. DEM-based analyses of scroll bar floodplains provide critical insight into the temporal evolution of channel morphology and the underlying hydrologic and sedimentary controls that govern riverine landscape change.

The figure below is a visualization of the DEM of a bend on the Lower Brazos River, TX. We can clearly see the undulations in the DEM caused by the river migration as well as features such as cross-channels formed by water flow through the floodplain.

Getting Started

If you intend to use ScrollStats for your own analysis, follow the User Installation instructions.

If you intend to develop or contribute to ScrollStats, follow the Developer Installation instructions.

User Installation

Install ScrollStats with pip

python -m pip install scrollstats

Or install with conda

conda install scrollstats

NOTE: scrollstats v0.1.3 must be installed with python <=3.12 when using conda

Developer Installation

First, clone the repo locally, create a virtual environment for the project, then install the [dev] optional dependencies listed in pyproject.toml.

git clone https://github.com/tamu-edu/scrollstats

python -m venv venv/
source venv/bin/activate

(venv) python -m pip install -e ".[dev]"

The ScrollStats Workflow

The ScrollStats Workflow can be broken up into the 3 major steps listed below. Each of these steps is covered in detail in docs with code examples using datasets generated from a bend on the Lower Brazos River, TX.

1. Delineate Ridge Areas

Delineate ridge areas from a DEM to create the ridge area raster. This is achieved by:

1. applying the profile curvature and residual topography transforms to the DEM
2. applying a threshold at 0 to these transformed rasters to create binary rasters
3. finding the union of these binary rasters
4. denoising the union raster

2. Create Vector Datasets

Create the following vector datasets to define key morphological features of the bend.

• bend boundary
• packet boundaries
• channel centerline
• ridge lines
• migration pathways

Some of these datasets are digitized manually, while others are generated by ScrollStats. Details of the vector data creation process can be found in the doc linked above.

3. Calculate Ridge Metrics

Once all of the vector datasets are created and the raster areas are delineated, you can now calculate ridge metrics across the entire bend.

These metrics include ridge amplitude, width, and migration distance for every intersection of a ridge and migration pathway.

Contributing

Contribution to ScrollStats is welcome. There will forever be a "frozen" branch that contains the code exactly as it was at the time of publication, but it is the intent of the maintainer to accept community feedback and suggestions to the project.

Submitting Feedback To submit feedback, please open an issue on this repository with the appropriate label. Currently used labels are:

• documentation: issues concerning the workflow or clarity of instructions
• feature: issues requesting or proposing new features for scrollstats
• bug: issues concerning errors in the code itself