Climate Variability and Change—Hydrological Impacts (Proceedings of the Fifth FRIEND World Conference held at Havana, Cuba, November 2006), IAHS Publ. 308, 2006, 81–85.

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Application of digital terrain analysis to estimate hydrological variables in the Luquillo Mountains of Puerto Rico

ANDREW S. PIKE

Department of Earth and Environmental Science, University of Pennsylvania, 240 South 33rd Street, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19104, USA

apike@sas.upenn.edu

Abstract Techniques of digital terrain analysis were applied to estimate hydrological variables in basins draining the Luquillo Mountains of northeastern Puerto Rico. A 10-m resolution Digital Elevation Model (DEM) was interpolated from 10 m elevation contour lines and used as the template for hydrological analysis. A high density stream network representing all perennial streams, including previously unmapped 1st order streams, was defined using the DEM. Similarly, for each 10 m grid cell within the stream network, mean annual rainfall, runoff, and discharge were estimated using regression equations derived from long-term rainfall and streamflow gauges. The result is a simple spatial framework to estimate hydrological variables in the region.

Key words GIS; Puerto Rico; surface water; stream network; spatial interpolation

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