wind.shelter: Wind Shelter Index
In debangs/RSAGA: SAGA Geoprocessing and Terrain Analysis in R

Description Usage Arguments Details Value Note Author(s) References See Also Examples

wind.shelter is a function to be used with focal.function to calculate a topographic wind shelter index from a digital elevation model, which is a proxy for snow accumulation on the lee side of topographic obstacles. wind.shelter.prep performs some preparatory calculations to speed up repeated calls to wind.shelter.

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wind.shelter(x, prob = NULL, control)

wind.shelter.prep(radius, direction, tolerance, cellsize = 90)

`x`	square matrix of elevation data
`prob`	numeric: quantile of slope values to be used in computing the wind shelter index; if `NULL`, use `max` (equivalent to `prob=1`)
`control`	required argument: the result of a call to `wind.shelter.prep`
`radius`	radius (>1) of circle segment to be used (number of grid cells, not necessarily an integer)
`direction`	wind direction: direction from which the wind originates; North = 0 = `2*pi`, clockwise angles.
`tolerance`	directional tolerance
`cellsize`	grid cellsize

wind.shelter implements a wind shelter index used by Plattner et al. (2004) for modeling snow accumulation patterns on a glacier in the Austrian Alps. It is a modified version of the algorithm of Winstral et al. (2002). The wind shelter index of Plattner et al. (2004) is defined as:

Shelter index(S) = arctan( max( (z(x0)-z(x)) / |x0-x| : x in S ) ),

where S = S(x0,a,da,d) is the set of grid nodes within a distance <=d from x0, only considering grid nodes in directions between a-da and a+da from x0.

The present implementation generalizes this index by replacing max by the quantile function; the max function is used if prob=NULL, and the same result is obtained for prob=1 using the quantile function.

The function wind.shelter returns the wind shelter index as described above if a numeric matrix x is provided. If it is missing, it returns the character string "windshelter".

wind.shelter.prep returns a list with components mask and dist. Both are square matrices with 2*(ceiling(radius)+1) columns and rows:

`mask`	indicates which grid cell in the moving window is within the specified circle segment (value `FALSE`) or not (`TRUE`)
`dist`	the precomputed distances of a grid cell to the center of the moving window, in map units

The wind shelter index only makes sense if elevation is measured in the same units as the horizontal map units used for the cellsize argument (i.e. usually meters).

wind.shelter and wind.shelter.prep do not restrict the calculation to a circular area; this is done by focal.function when used in combination with that function (assuming search.mode="circle").

Note that the present definition of the wind shelter index returns negative values for surfaces that are completely exposed toward the specified direction. This may make sense if interpreted as a "wind exposure index", or it might be appropriate to set negative wind shelter values to 0.

Alexander Brenning

Plattner, C., Braun, L.N., Brenning, A. (2004): Spatial variability of snow accumulation on Vernagtferner, Austrian Alps, in winter 2003/2004. Zeitschrift fuer Gletscherkunde und Glazialgeologie, 39: 43-57.

Winstral, A., Elder, K., Davis, R.E. (2002): Spatial snow modeling of wind-redistributed snow using terrain-based parameters. Journal of Hydrometeorology, 3: 524-538.

focal.function, quantile

# Settings used by Plattner et al. (2004):
ctrl = wind.shelter.prep(6,-pi/4,pi/12,10)
## Not run: focal.function("dem.asc",fun=wind.shelter,control=ctrl,
    radius=6,search.mode="circle")
## End(Not run)