Digitizing and analysis programs for historical floodplain transect data from the Whitewater River Valley, Minnesota, United States

This repository was developed to augment and analyze topographic floodplain transect data collected in Minnesota's Whitewater River Valley (U.S.), between 1939 and 1994, through (1) geospatial digitization, (2) elevation-change calculations, and (3) statistical comparison tests.

The historical data was collected by federal agencies during stream and valley sedimentation surveys aimed at investigating accelerated erosion and deposition and/or increased flooding in the basin; this dataset is inherently geomorphic in nature so these programs pursue analyses primarily of interest to the earth scientist.

These programs operate on surface profile data (i.e., elevation data).

This repository includes 4 programs:

transect_cogo_digitizer.py: Performs coordinate geometry (COGO) calculations to digitize tabular transect elevation data into GIS files. transect_sed_rate_calculator.py: Calculates mean-transect-elevation-change rates between successive elevation datasets to measure topographic change. transect_sed_rate_statistics.py: Performs Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) hypothesis testing suites to compare all mean-transect-elevation-change rates over the time interval represented in this dataset—1855–1994. transect_analysis_functions.py: The user-defined functions (UDFs) executed in the other programs.