Application of ArcGIS in fractal analysis of rivers

Geographic Information System (GIS) not only has the function of managing geographic information and processing graphics, but also can resolve the problems of complex spatial analysis, spatial simulation and spatial decision-making. Geographic fractal research, whether measuring fractal dimension or simulating fractal structure, is a rule and complicated process. Some popular GIS software has many spatial analysis modules, but lacks the function of spatial fractal analysis. Based on the GIS software, developing spatial fractal analysis module has broad applied prospect and practical value. This article is about researching for method of developing fractal analysis module in ArcGIS software, calculating fractal-dimension by box-counting and processing some elementary researches on fractal characteristic of rivers with this module. This module is developed in ArcGIS 9.3 software by using VBA programming language.