Potential issues in using a small expansion rate in add_contour function

[BahramKhazaei-NOAA]

If one uses a small expansion_rate the program may generate strips/patches of high-resolution cells to connect areas within a contour range. In the example below, all settings were the same except for the expansion rate value:

smaller expansion_rate (0.005):

larger expansion_rate (0.05):

[SorooshMani-NOAA]

@BahramKhazaei-NOAA can you please share your script for this mesh? I'd like to run it on my side with your DEMs and see how this issue shows up.

[BahramKhazaei-NOAA]

@SorooshMani-NOAA Here is the path to the script (I changed that script but I created a new one for you which should result in similar patch areas in the Aleutian Islands) on Hercules:
/work2/noaa/nos-surge/bkhazaei/work/run_dir/Alaska_Modeling/pre_processing/grid/bearing_sea_ocsmesh/Bering_Sea_debugging_for_soroosh.py

You should see the patchy areas by running the above script but if you change exp_rate to larger values [0.05, 0.05] they should disappear.