A reverse tracing of the water flow path algorithm for slope length extraction based on triangulated irregular network

Terrain factor is an important factor affecting soil erosion, in which slope length is an important indicator of terrain factor. In this paper, we model the regional topographic relief with triangulated irregular network TIN, use the slope aspect of the TIN triangular surface to determine the flow direction, and propose an algorithm (RT-WFP) for extracting the slope length by tracing the water flow trajectory in reverse direction. The slope cutoff point rule is set in the algorithm to improve the accuracy of the slope length extraction results. We calculated the slope length of the experimental area of the small watershed of Golden Hook-shaped collapsing hill in Bailu Township, Ganxian District, and the rationality of the algorithm proposed in this paper is verified through the comparison and analysis with the traditional slope length extraction algorithm. The experimental results show that, compared with the traditional D8 algorithm, the water flow path extracted by this algorithm in the experimental area more closely matches the water flow path based on contour mapping, and the slope length extracted by this algorithm has a lower sensitivity to the resolution of the data, and the percentage of cells with a slope length value of no more than 300 m (the limit standard of the RUSLE model) at a resolution of 30 m reaches 94.19%.