Short Communication: TopoToolbox 2 – MATLAB-based software for topographic analysis and modeling in Earth surface sciences

TLDR

TopoToolbox is a MATLAB program for the analysis of digital elevation models (DEMs). Version 2 of TopoToolbox adopts an object‑oriented approach to handle gridded DEMs and derived data, and its GUI enables visual exploration and interaction with DEMs and derivatives for fluvial and tectonic geomorphologists. The new technique for storing flow directions as topologically ordered vectors of indices makes flow‑related attribute calculations about 20 times faster and reduces memory usage to one‑third of the previous version, making TopoToolbox a faster, more memory‑efficient tool for terrain analysis and a framework for hydrological and geomorphological modeling in MATLAB. Abstract.

Abstract

Abstract. TopoToolbox is a MATLAB program for the analysis of digital elevation models (DEMs). With the release of version 2, the software adopts an object-oriented programming (OOP) approach to work with gridded DEMs and derived data such as flow directions and stream networks. The introduction of a novel technique to store flow directions as topologically ordered vectors of indices enables calculation of flow-related attributes such as flow accumulation ∼20 times faster than conventional algorithms while at the same time reducing memory overhead to 33% of that required by the previous version. Graphical user interfaces (GUIs) enable visual exploration and interaction with DEMs and derivatives and provide access to tools targeted at fluvial and tectonic geomorphologists. With its new release, TopoToolbox has become a more memory-efficient and faster tool for basic and advanced digital terrain analysis that can be used as a framework for building hydrological and geomorphological models in MATLAB.