A tool for mapping and spatio-temporal analysis of hydrological data

Abstract

There is a need in water sciences for computational tools to integrate large spatially distributed datasets to provide insight into the spatial and temporal domains of the data while allowing visualization, analysis in the spatial and temporal dimensions, data metrics, and pattern recognition in the same application. Spatial and temporal variability of hydrological processes as well as the associated phenomena transport is better represented in high spatio-temporal resolution datasets. A conceptual data model and analysis tool, SPELLmap, was developed at the USDA Agricultural Research Service, Grazinglands Research Laboratory using the Delphi programming language to rapidly process, manipulate, analyze, and visualize large geo-located datasets. SPELLmap integrates the spatial and temporal domains of hydrological data to perform analyses in space and time while providing data metrics. SPELLmap has the capacity to represent three or four dimensional problems using a layer data structure. Three examples to illustrate SPELLmap functionalities were provided for the raster and raster-to-network domains. SPELLmap can be used for data interpolation, visualization, gridding, pattern recognition, and data metrics in integrated environmental modeling problems.