Geomorphometric assessment of drainage systems in a semiarid region of Argentina using geospatial tools and multivariate statistics.

GENCHI, S.A.; VITALE, A.J.; PERILLO, G.M.E.; PICCOLO, M.C.

EARTH SCIENCES INFORMATICS

Springer-Verlag

Lugar: Berlin; Año: 2016

In semi-arid environments there is often a lack ofdata on hydrological variables that limits the ability to understandkey hydrological processes. In response to this need,geomorphometric analysis is a quantitative approach that hasproven to be useful. This work aims to assess and classify 35exorheic drainage basins located in a semi-arid area ofArgentina (Northeastern Patagonia) according to theirgeomorphometric properties by using GIS technology andprincipal component (PCA) and cluster analysis (CA) multivariatetechniques. In addition, an assessment of automateddrainage network extraction accuracy was performed by comparingit with the actual drainage network. The study showedthat it was possible to derive automated drainage networkswith errors lower than 6 %. By comparing both PCA andCA, it was found that the former allows a good understandingof the clustering of basins from the CA. All basins were clusteredinto four groups following a significant spatial continuity. This type of study gives the basis for regionalscaleanalysis, and provides further information for subsequentmodeling.