If each element in the Landscape Unit is listed individually, the number of columns to read will equal the number of elements in the Landscape. However, if there are several elements with consecutive numbers in a Landscape, they can be listed by specifying the first one in one column and the last one with a hyphen in front of it in the next column.

A Landscape Unit (LSU) is a collection of HRUs. It can be equivalent to a subbasin, a floodplain or upland unit, or a grid cell with multiple HRUs. LSUs are currently only used for summarizing landscape outputs. Two files are needed to define which HRUs are part of which LSU:

• ls_unit.def specifies which HRUs a LSU contains.

• ls_unit.ele lists all HRUs and their corresponding LSU and basin fractions.

The name of the Landscape Unit is not used by the model

If elem_tot = 1, there can be only one element in the Landscape Unit, whose number (id in rout_unit.ele) is specified in this column. If elem_tot >1, this column is followed by additional columns listing the elements included in the Landscape Unit, but those columns will not have a header. If there are several elements with consecutive numbers in a Landscape Unit, they can be listed by specifying the first one in one column and the last one with a hyphen in front of it in the next column.

The ID of the element is a primary key referenced by elements in ls_unit.def. All IDs in the ls_unit.ele file must be unique.

HRUs are the only spatial objects that can be elements of a Landscape Unit.

The name of the element is not used by the model.

The object ID of the element is a foreign key referencing the HRU ID in the HRU connect file.