An Automated Gis Partitioning Approach For a Large Scale River Basin Landscape

River valleys are unique landscape features for their different physical processes and properties with respect to neighboring hillslopes. River valley buffers or floodplains are the subject of detailed maps identifying the spatial distribution of the frequency of satura - tion and maximum inundation limits. This zoning activity is a fundamental tool in urban and landscape planning for protecting the natural fluvial domain as well as the development of human, animal and industrial life. Standard zoning approaches, based on expensive topographic, hydrologic and hydraulic studies, are often difficult to implement at the basin scale. This work presents an automated hydrogeomorphic method for river valley mapping using advanced terrain analysis algorithms - which makes extensive use of GIS and remotely-sensed topo- graphic information of DEMs - for capturing the floodplain footprint. The case study of the Tiber River in the Italian region of Umbria is presented along with results and a discussion on the potential applications of the proposed method.