Terrain & maps
Geomorphological & Contour Survey
Walk the ground, get the contour map.
Turns GPS points taken across a site and along a wadi into a kriged contour map in UTM, a longitudinal channel profile with gradient and sinuosity, and a written interpretation joined with your field geomorphology.
Overview
Phone GPS gives good positions but weak heights. Where you have no levelled heights, the tool fills Z from a 30 m DEM and marks those points in the report.
What you enter · What you get
What you enter
- GPS elevation points or a channel trace
- Contour interval (m) and smoothing factor
- Terrain type, drainage pattern, valley profile
- Weathering and erosion type, flood-risk rating
What you get
- Contour map with survey points and channel
- Satellite view
- Longitudinal profile, gradient (‰) and sinuosity
- Geomorphological interpretation and UTM tables
How it works in the field
Walk the area and capture points
Trace the valley axis
Set interval and display
Generate the map and report
Method and equations
Surface
Ordinary kriging in UTM metres.
Channel indices
Gradient over channel length and sinuosity as channel length over straight distance.
S = Δz / L · P = L / Lstraight
Who uses it
Geomorphologists and hydrologistsSite engineers planning drainage and accessStudents learning contour mapping in the field
Standards and references
- Shepard, D. (1968). A two-dimensional interpolation function for irregularly-spaced data. Proceedings of the 23rd ACM National Conference, 517–524.
- Howard, A.D. (1967). Drainage analysis in geologic interpretation: a summation. AAPG Bulletin, 51(11), 2246–2259.
- Strahler, A.N. (1957). Quantitative analysis of watershed geomorphology. Transactions AGU, 38(6), 913–920.
Results support professional judgement. They do not replace a licensed engineer’s or geologist’s sign-off.
At a glance
- Category
- Terrain & maps
- Runs on
- Phone, tablet and desktop browser
- Export
- PNG and SVG map, PDF report
- Access
- Subscribers
Run this survey on your next site
All 29 tools, report export and the AI assistant come with one subscription.