For the analysis of river
evolution, the use of quantitative parameters can be quite useful in order to
assess changes in the channel planform. Among the several parameters proposed
by different authors in a number of papers, channel length and width, braiding
and sinuosity indexes, and channel lateral shifting are proved to be the most
effective ones for a quantitative analysis of river changes. However, the
calculation of these parameters is time-consuming, tedious and error-prone,
even where made in a GIS environment. This work describes four shell scripts
that perform fast and automatic calculation of the morphometric parameters and
draw curves showing the？variation
of the calculated parameters along the entire channel development. The scripts
are？based on commands of the
GRASS GIS free and open source software and, as input, they require a simple
vector map containing the essential features of a river channel,？i.e.？bankfull channel limits and
longitudinal and lateral bars.
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