Digital elevation models and their use for assessing soil erosion rates on arable lands

Abstract

The paper presents the results of assessing the accuracy of global digital elevation models (GDEMs), SRTM and ASTER GDEMs, based on a small catchment located on the eastern slope of the Central Russian Upland in the upper reaches of the Veduga River basin. The analysis of the errors in the morphometric parameters has been performed by comparing the part of the global DEM SRTM and ASTER GDEMs representing the relief of the selected catchment area with more accurate 1:10 000 (TOPO) maps data. The values of the slopes and the lengths of the slopes have been used as statistical indicators to estimate the accuracy of the models. The results of the comparison show that the SRTM model is more similar to the TOPO model than the ASTER GDEM. Therefore, the tested version of the SRTM model can be successfully used for calculations aimed to not only determine the average annual erosion rates for a river basin, but also to create maps of soil erosion intensity on slopes.

Keywords

• erosion
• digital elevation model
• srtm
• aster
• gis
• small valley