Software » CatchmentsUK » In depth

A catchment boundary defines the area of land which drains to a given point (the catchment outlet). CatchmentsUK enables boundaries to be generated automatically for catchments in the United Kingdom. Benefits of the system include:

• Fast, reliable and reproducible catchment boundaries produced as ESRI ShapeFiles (.shp) and comma separated files (.csv).
• Boundary definition routines underpinned by Ordnance Survey elevation data.
• Ability to overlay raster contextual layers to assist in verifying boundaries.
• Identification of catchments greater than 0.5km².

The ability to identify the boundary of a catchment is fundamental to many hydrological and environmental applications. Catchment boundaries can be digitised manually from paper maps and then used in a variety of geographic information system (GIS) applications. This process can be laborious for large and/or high resolution catchment boundaries.