Is it possible to model the easiest pathway through a landscape between many points (rather than just two)?
I want to carry out a cost-path analysis, I would like to display the easiest pathways through the entire study region (not just one route but all)- by taking into account slope and proximity of sites to rivers or valley floors.
I have a DEM raster (obtained from UK ordnance survey – Landform-panorama). River systems were in the form of a polygon shapefile, which I have converted in to a raster layer. The lat/lon coordinates of the 10 sites where added to the DEM raster as a feature class.
I am using ArcMap 10.1.
Best Answer
In order to perform this task in ArcGIS 10.1, you will require the Spatial Analyst Extension which can perform analysis on rasters including Least-Cost Path.
ESRI has created a series of tutorials to get you started with Spatial Analyst. The last of which creates the optimal route to a site. If you follow the tutorial you should be on your way to finding the optimal route for all ten of your sites. The results will look something like this:
It sounds as if the rasters you're missing are the slope raster as well as the distance rasters to rivers and valley floors (wouldn't valley floors usually contain some sort of waterway?) You should be able to easily create these with Spatial Analyst.
If you don't have access to Spatial Analyst, you should be able to create them and perform the analysis using open source GIS such as QGIS or GRASS. The tools needed are available in those, and you could just adapt the tutorial for use in those programs.