Analysis – Depression Map

The Depression Map outlines depressions in the terrain with no natural outlet, enabling water to gather during rainfall. The Depression Map is located in the dock by default. However, if it is not in your dock, it can be added from the library.

Three depressions around the house using the default hatched rendering style.

How to use the Depression Map

Styles

SCALGO Live provides multiple styles for the depression map. The inside of depressions can be filled by hatch pattern (the default) or only the outline of depressions can be shown. We also support a banded style where you can a range of volume or area to color with different colors. You can change the style in the gear icon next to the layer.

Banded style: the green areas describes the wet area when 2000m3 of water is poured. the yellow area describes the wet areas when 5000m3 of water is poured. the red areas is the rest of the area.

Sliders: Identifying major depressions

Use the "Volume" and "Area" sliders to filter out small depressions. Only depressions with a maximum volume and area bigger than the slider settings are shown.

Volume and area sliders: the depressions whose volume or area is less than the slider will disappear.

Spill point and volume/area contours

Extra options for depression map
Spill points, volume contour and area contour options are available for the depression map

Spill points are the lowest point on the boundary of the depression, if a depression is filled with water, the spill point is where water would flow out of it. You can enable "Spill Points" to display these points for the depressions. If there is more than one point with the same lowest elevation, we will show only one of those.

For every depression, the spill point is displayed as a little black disc.

It is often useful to quickly see how much space a certain volume (or area) would take up inside a depression. For this use case we support showing volume or area contours inside the depressions. The volume (or area) contour covers an area whose volume (or area) is at least what is set on the volume (or area) slider.

In the same area as the above figure, here we are showing the depression map in the banded style with volume contours: the green areas describes areas with a volume of less than 2000 cubic metres. The volume contours describe areas whose volume is at least 2000 metres. Therefore they may not cover exactly the same areas.

Point query: Getting information about a specific depression

Use the point query tool to view the volume and the area of the depression beneath the chosen point and the maximum volume and the maximum area of the entire depression. After choosing a point, you can export the retrieved information. Simply press export in the bottom of Point Info

Point info shows the information available at the chosen spot.

You can also use the point query tool on a spill point, this will give you the total volume and area of the depression.

Depression map spill point point query.
Point info a spill points will give you the total volume and the area of the depression.

Profile: Getting information about a path

Use profile to view the elevation of the maximal depression and the queried depression (if selected) along a path.

Profile window: the hatch pattern area describes the maximal depressions and the purple area describes the queried depression.

You can export the values from the profile like with other profiles. For each point along the profile the export will give you:

  • The maximum volume of the depression at the point
  • The maximum area of the depression at the point
  • The volume underneath the contour defined by the point.
  • The area underneath the contour defined by the point.

Download

The depression map can be downloaded in a vector format or a raster format. The vector file contains volume and area information for each depression. The raster file can contain either volumes or areas.