<scp>HydroWidth</scp>: A small‐scale approach to calculate river width and its variability

Digital map processing techniques have enabled new computational methods to extract geographic features from scanned sources. These are mainly historical maps and rich in spatiotemporal information which can be derived by descriptive metrics. River channel width is such a typical ecological metric used calculate properties as water discharge rates and, generally, often applied hydrological monitoring. Measures of river previous work successfully measured based on situ measurements or remote sensing efforts, but poorly captured the variability due simplifications network sparse availability measurements. As greatly vary change over space time, capturing its with modern geospatial key interest interdisciplinary fields studying changes riverine properties. This article proposes HydroWidth, small-scale approach measure continuously along channel, capable simple well complex structures without use masks. The compared two conventional vector-based discrete measurement test robustness terms measuring variability. Furthermore, this evaluates adaptability HydroWidth performing three experiments at rivers different structure, length, complexity. sources, allowing novel perspective applying algorithms non-airborne data Lastly, performance results each experimental site presented discussed.