DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.15099149
title: Improved River Slope Datasets for the United States Hydrofabrics

description: The CONtiguous United States (CONUS) “Flood Inundation Mapping Hydrofabric - ICESat-2 River Surface Slope” (FIM HF IRIS) dataset integrates river slopes from the global IRIS dataset for 117,357 spatially corresponding main-stream reaches within NOAA’s Office of Water Prediction operational FIM forecasting system, which utilizes the Height Above Nearest Drainage approach (OWP HAND-FIM) to help warn communities of floods. To achieve this, a spatial joining approach was developed to align FIM HF reaches with IRIS reaches, accounting for differences in reach flowline sources. When applied to OWP HAND-FIM, FIM HF IRIS improved flood map accuracy by an average of 31% (CSI) across eight flood events compared to the original FIM HF slopes. Using a common attribute, IRIS data were also transferred from FIM HF IRIS to the CONUS-scale Next Generation Water Resources Modeling Framework Hydrofabric (NextGen HF), creating the NextGen HF IRIS dataset. By referencing another common attribute, SWOT vector data (e.g., water surface elevation, slope, discharge) can be leveraged by OWP HAND-FIM and NextGen through the two resulting datasets. The spatial joining approach, which enables the integration of FIM HF with other hydrologic datasets via flowlines, is provided alongside the two resulting datasets.

If you use this dataset in your work, please cite: 

Yixian Chen, Anupal Baruah, Dipsikha Devi, et al. Merging Remote Sensing Derived River Slope Datasets with High-Resolution Hydrofabrics for the United States. Authorea. May 15, 2025.DOI: 10.22541/au.174733764.47269767/v1

1. Variable Description

1.1 FIM HF IRIS v1.0

HydroID:

Unique identifier for FIM HF stream reaches

From_Node:

Upstream node ID

To_Node:

Downstream node ID

reach_id:

The SWORD reach identifier

slope_iris_sword:

The IRIS slope joined to the corresponding FIM HF flowline, while the SWORD slopes were used for the flowlines where the IRIS slopes were unavailable [mm/mm]

slope_source_iris_sword:

Value indicating the slope of slope_iris_sword is from IRIS (1) or SWORD (2)

1.2 NextGen HF IRIS v1.0

id:

Unique identifier for NextGen HF flowline (flowpath)

to_id:

NextGen HF flowline id where water flows

reach_id:

The SWORD reach identifier

slope_iris_sword:

The IRIS slope joined to the corresponding NextGen HF flowline, while the SWORD slopes were used for the flowlines where the IRIS slopes were unavailable [mm/mm]

slope_source_iris_sword:

Value indicating the slope of slope_iris_sword is from IRIS (1) or SWORD (2)

2. Notes

The slope_iris_sword in FIM HF IRIS can be used with the Recalculate_Discharge_in_Hydrotable_useFIMHFIRIS.py script to regenerate the hydrotable for OWP HAND-FIM, where the discharge will be recalculated using slope_iris_sword. Consequently, the synthetic rating curves (SRCs) will be updated based on the new discharges (see more details here). The script can also be used to regenerate hydrotables using river slopes from other sources, such as NextGen HF, provided they are linked to the FIM HF flowlines.

The feature classes for FIMHF_IRIS and NextGenHF_IRIS are provided in formats of geopackage (.gpkg) and geodatabases (.gdb), which can be accessed using ArcGIS, QGIS, or relevant Python packages for inspection, visualization, or spatial analysis of slope_iris_sword.