The Drainage Network Ordering operation:
- examines all drainage lines in the drainage network map, i.e. output map from the Drainage Network Extraction operation,
- finds the nodes where two or more streams meet, and
- assigns a unique ID to each stream in between these nodes, as well as to the streams that only have a single node.
To limit the number of output streams and reduce calculation time, you can specify the minimum length that streams should have to remain in the network.
The output of this operation is a raster map, a segment map and an attribute table that all use a newly created ID domain.
The attribute table contains information on each stream, such as:
- Strahler ordering number, Shreve ordering number,
- stream length, calculated along the drainage, and calculated as a straight line between XY-coordinates,
- slope values in degrees and in percentages, calculated along the drainage and calculated as a straight line between XY-coordinates, and elevation,
- sinuosity of the drainage path as a measure of meandering,
- total upstream drainage length, i.e. the total length of the streams that drain into the current one, etc.