Working Group 4: Usable Indices for Connectivity
Digital elevation models (DEMs) describe the landscape topography, which is both a product and a driver of the activity of geomorphic processes. In the same way, the
connectivity of landscape units with respect to water and sediment fluxes can be seen as both a driver and an emergent property of hydrological and geomorphic processes.
WG4 addresses the use of digital elevation models to assess hydrological and sediment connectivity quantitatively through indices at different spatial scales, from a single plot,
to a whole catchment, to the regional scale. Specific objectives are to
• Summarise and evaluate existing indices used (or useful) for the quantification of runoff
and sediment connectivity.
• Discuss concepts and set forth requirements for the development of new indices that
go beyond static, purely DEM-based approaches (i.e., structural connectivity) by
accounting for dynamic, process-based aspects of connectivity and the local context.
• Evaluate both structural connectivity alone as well as a driver of functional connectivity
(by influencing processes that establish connection or disconnection).
• Work towards time-dependent connectivity indices.
The working group leaders of WG4 are:
Tobias Heckmann (email)
Francesco Brardinoni (email)
