The GeoTools Shareware Package for Fluvial Systems Analysis

An important contribution that engineers and geomorphologists can make to the practice of river restoration is to develop tools that increase the ability of practitioners to analyze complex stable channel design problems. This paper introduces GeoTools, a suite of analysis tools for fluvial systems written in Visual Basic for Applications/Excel. Based on a time flow series and basic input data, GeoTools provides users with outputs including effective discharge and sediment yield calculations, temporal distributions of hydraulic parameters (e.g. shear stress, specific stream power, and scour indices), channel stability indices and over 80 hydrologic metrics, hi combination, these modules allow users to quickly compute metrics related to stream channel form, impacts of climate and land use changes, and flow alteration. A case study is detailed to illustrate the benefit of applying GeoTools to a channel restoration project.