TY - JOUR
T1 - Short communication
T2 - The Topographic Analysis Kit (TAK) for TopoToolbox
AU - Forte, Adam M.
AU - Whipple, Kelin
N1 - Funding Information:
Acknowledgements. We thank Nari Miller, Andrew Darling, Joel Leonard, and Wren Raming for beta testing early versions of the TAK functions. We also thank Associate Editor Simon Mudd and reviewers Alison Duvall, Daniel Hobley, and Stefan Hergarten for helpful suggestions on the original draft of this manuscript. We are indebted to the original authors of TopoToolbox, without whom this effort would not have been possible and we especially thank Wolfgang Schwanghart for his help with various code issues over the years. Development of TAK was supported by the National Science Foundation grant EAR-1450970 to Adam M. Forte and Kelin X. Whipple.
Publisher Copyright:
© Author(s) 2019.
PY - 2019/1/22
Y1 - 2019/1/22
N2 - Quantitative analysis of digital topographic data is an increasingly important part of many studies in the geosciences. Initially, performing these analyses was a niche endeavor, requiring detailed domain knowledge and programming skills, but increasingly broad, flexible, open-source code bases have been developed to increasingly democratize topographic analysis. However, many of these analyses still require specific computing environments and/or moderate levels of knowledge of both the relevant programming language and the correct way to take these fundamental building blocks and conduct an efficient and effective topographic analysis. To partially address this, we have written the Topographic Analysis Kit (TAK), which leverages the power of one of these open code bases, TopoToolbox, to build a series of high-level topographic analysis tools to perform a variety of common topographic analyses. These analyses include the generation of maps of normalized channel steepness, or X, and selection and statistical analysis of populations of watersheds. No programming skills or advanced mastery of MATLAB is required for effective use of TAK. In addition - to expand the utility of TAK along with the primary functions, which like the underlying TopoToolbox functions require MATLAB and several proprietary toolboxes to run - we provide compiled versions of these functions that use the free MATLAB Runtime Environment for users who do not have institutional access to MATLAB or all of the required toolboxes.
AB - Quantitative analysis of digital topographic data is an increasingly important part of many studies in the geosciences. Initially, performing these analyses was a niche endeavor, requiring detailed domain knowledge and programming skills, but increasingly broad, flexible, open-source code bases have been developed to increasingly democratize topographic analysis. However, many of these analyses still require specific computing environments and/or moderate levels of knowledge of both the relevant programming language and the correct way to take these fundamental building blocks and conduct an efficient and effective topographic analysis. To partially address this, we have written the Topographic Analysis Kit (TAK), which leverages the power of one of these open code bases, TopoToolbox, to build a series of high-level topographic analysis tools to perform a variety of common topographic analyses. These analyses include the generation of maps of normalized channel steepness, or X, and selection and statistical analysis of populations of watersheds. No programming skills or advanced mastery of MATLAB is required for effective use of TAK. In addition - to expand the utility of TAK along with the primary functions, which like the underlying TopoToolbox functions require MATLAB and several proprietary toolboxes to run - we provide compiled versions of these functions that use the free MATLAB Runtime Environment for users who do not have institutional access to MATLAB or all of the required toolboxes.
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U2 - 10.5194/esurf-7-87-2019
DO - 10.5194/esurf-7-87-2019
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85060495912
SN - 2196-6311
VL - 7
SP - 87
EP - 95
JO - Earth Surface Dynamics
JF - Earth Surface Dynamics
IS - 1
ER -