The cartographic model of basin geosystems of small rivers of the Lena River catchment area

Abstract

The analysis of the available foreign and Russian models of river basins has demonstrated that there are no such successful regional generalizations for the territory under study. For the Asian part of the Arctic catchment basin of Russia occupying an area of about 2.5 million km2, a digital map of basin geosystems of small rivers of the Lena River catchment area (scale 1:1000 000) has been created. The map is a vector layer of polygonal objects. The verification of the obtained results provides evidence of the satisfactory quality of the construction of boundaries of small river basins in automatic mode (the standard error for various landscape conditions makes 7–8.5%). A total of 49570 objects (basins) with an average area of about 47.8 km2 have been allocated on this map. The methodology used for constructing the basins on the map includes: selection of basic DEM and river network map; selection of geometric parameters for regular raster grid to present initial data, perform model calculations, and display results; correction of DEM using river network map; construction of boundaries of catchments in automatic mode; elaboration of a vector layer of polygonal objects; assessment of watersheds modelling accuracy for different types of landscape. The specialized Geographic Information System “River basins of the Lena River Catchment Area” has been implemented. Geoinformation about natural and anthropogenic characteristics of the river basins has been integrated in GIS.

Keywords

• catchment area
• small river basins
• dem
• maps
• gis