WMS:TOPAZ

The Topographic Parameterization Program (TOPAZ) was developed by the USDA-ARS, National Agricultural Water Quality Laboratory under the direction of Dr. Jurgen Garbrecht. TOPAZ is a public domain program that is distributed free of charge to interested persons. A modified version of the program is distributed with WMS for the purpose of computing flow directions and flow accumulations for use in basin delineation with DEMs. However, TOPAZ is capable of further DEM elevation processing, including raster smoothing, basin and stream delineation and ordering, and development of other watershed parameters. If you are interested in obtaining the latest, complete version of TOPAZ, visit the United States Department of Agriculture's (USDA) Agricultural Research Service website (here]) and click on TOPAZ.

If you have or obtain the complete TOPAZ program, WMS is capable of writing an input file for DEDNM (the primary TOPAZ module). DEDNM requires as input a file containing the elevations (must be named DEDNM.INP) and a control file named DNMCNT.INP.

TOPAZ crashes if the file name is 60 characters or longer.

Related Topics

• Flow Directions and Accumulations
• Defining Basins
• Export TOPAZ Input File
• References