The LakeCat DataSet (http://www2.epa.gov/national-aquatic-resource-surveys/lakecat) provides summaries of natural and anthropogenic landscape features for ~378,000 lakes and their associated catchments within the conterminous USA. This repo contains code used in LakeCat to process a suite of landscape rasters to produce watershed metrics for these lakes.

The scripts for LakeCat rely on several python modules a user will need to install such as numpy, pandas, gdal, fiona, rasterio, geopandas, shapely, pysal, and ArcPy with an ESRI license (minimal steps still using ArcPy). We highly recommend using a scientific python distribution such as Anaconda or Enthought Canopy. We used the conda package manager to install necessary python modules. Our essential packages and versions used are listed below (Windows 64 and Python 2.7.11):

If you are using Anaconda, creating a new, clean 'LakeCat' environment with these needed packages can be done easily and simply one of several ways:

• In your conda shell, add one necessary channel and then download the lakecat environment from the Anaconda cloud:

  • conda config --add channels conda-forge
  • conda env create mweber36/lakecat

• Alternatively, using the lakecat.yml file in this repository, in your conda shell cd to the directory where your lakecat.yml file is located and run:

  • conda env create -f LakeCat.yml

• To build environment yourself, do:

  • conda env create -n LakeCat rasterio geopandas
  • pip install georasters

• To activate this new environment and open Spyder, type the following at the conda prompt

  • activate LakeCat

  Then

  • Spyder

Finally, to use arcpy in this new environment, you will need to copy your Arc .pth file into your new environment. Copy the .pth file for your install of ArcGIS located in a directory like:

• C:\Python27\ArcGISx6410.3\Lib\site-packages\DTBGGP64.pth

To your environment directory which should look something like:

• C:\Anaconda\envs\lakecat\Lib\site-packages\DTBGGP64.pth

Note that the exact paths may vary depending on the version of ArcGIS and Anaconda you have installed and the configuration of your computer

• LakeCat.py.
• MakeFinalTables_LakeCat.py.

In turn, these scripts rely on a set of functions in LakeCat_functions.py.

A table with all required parameters is used to process landscape layers in LakeCat:

• ControlTable_LakeCat

After editing the control tables to provide necessary information, such as directory paths, the following stesps will excecute processes to generate new watershed metrics for the conterminous US. All examples in the control table are for layers (e.g., STATSGO % clay content of soils) that were processed as part of the LakeCat Dataset. This example assumes run in Anaconda within Conda shell.

1. Edit ControlTable_LakeCat and set desired layer's "run" column to 1. All other columns should be set to 0
2. Open a Conda shell and type "activate LakeCat"
3. At the Conda shell type: "Python"
4. Drag and drop "LakeCat.py" to the Conda shell from a file manager followed by another space
5. Drag and drop the control table to the Conda shell

Final text in Conda shell should resemble this: python C:\some_path\LakeCat.py C:\some_other_path\ControlTable.csv

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