StarHydro

Project Description
StarHydro provides a set of software tools for working with concepts of fluvial geomorphology. It allows the user to delineate watersheds and explore descriptive measures of a drainage basin, and to visualize and experiment with planar and relief terrain descriptors.

The Geomorphologic instantaneous unit hydrograph toolbox, embedded in StarHydro, allows students to set a watershed surface and stream flow velocities and to set rainfall in different areas of the watershed. This allows them to visualize the temporal effects of precipitation on outlet stream flow, and to experiment with the impact of stream velocities on the geomorphologic instantaneous unit hydrograph.

Rafael Raes of Civil and Environmental Engineering supplied the original inspiration for StarHydro. It is currently used the “Introduction to Hydrology” class in Course 1 at MIT.

StarHydro combines the adaptation of TEALsim for visualization and rendering, and GenePattern for directed computation on research models.