RivEX Manual

•RivEX will generate a dBase file listing the nearest reachable sites upstream of each input site. This tool is particularly useful at locating barriers to fish migration.

•After reading this page, you may be interested in a worked example of how to compute network distances between dams.

•In the image below the nearest reachable upstream barriers from site A are B, D, F & G.  B blocks access to C and D blocks access to E but B does not block access to D as D can be reached by the alternate route (the right hand side of the loop as you look at it).

•Sites must be snapped to the network and the ID field must be numeric. Your network must be in a coordinate system that is using metres or feet as the units for the distances to make sense.

If you want to find what is upstream of what within a single layer then simply set the Sites to search and Nearest upstream sites to find as the same layer.

If both layers are different datasets it is strongly recommended that the numeric ID values of the sites do not overlap. For example sites from the first layer may range from 1 to 10 and sites from the second layer should be something like 100 to110. You want to avoid having sites with ID values of 1 to 10 in both datasets.

•If a selection on the input site layer exists RivEX will enable the check box Use only selected sites. If you need to process only a sub set of your sites in the input layer then make sure you check this.  Any selection on the upstream sites layer is ignored.

•All RivEX generated fields must exist. Click OK and the tool will execute.

•RivEX will first check if the site ID's overlap in range when the input datasets are different. If they are found to overlap it is STRONLY recommended that you bail out and correct the situation by creating a new ID field for one of your datasets with a new range of values.

• RivEX then checks if the sites actually intersect the polylines of the network. If any are found not to be intersecting it will drop these from the analysis and the ID's written to an error log file. The error log file is written to ..\RivEX_Workspace\ErrorLogs\FailedSites_SiteLayerName.txt.

•Output is written to a dBase file and stored in the networks RivEX_Workspace\Output folder. The name given to this file is the name of the point layer with the suffix of "_NearestUpstreamSites".  The field headings have to be 10 characters or less to be a valid dBase field therefore abbreviations are used and are described below. 

•A -1 value indicates there are no sites upstream of the input site.

The USSite_Dis field is not calculated using a "classic" shortest path search it is calculated by subtracting the distance from network mouth of the TO site from the distance to network mouth of the FROM site. In river networks without loops this will always yield an accurate measure. In networks where the sites are separated by network that contain loops it is possible for RivEX to over estimate the distance between sites if the upstream site distances to network mouth was calculated by traversing another route through the multi-threaded section. Such over estimates are generally trivial but if the multi-threaded sections of the network are highly sinuous this may generate an unacceptable error. More information can be found here.