THE EVALUATION OF DIFFERENT TYPES OF DIGITAL ELEVETION MODELS FOR GEOMORPHOLOGICAL APPLICATIONS IN MOUNTAIN AREAS

摘要

Digital elevation models (DEMs) are the most powerful methods of representing relief. Because there are many types of DEMs regarding the data sources, we have tried to identify the most suitable DEMs for the terrain analysis in mountain areas. We evaluated DEMs obtained from different data sources and several interpolation methods. We used both visual analysis and geostatistical analysis to assess the accuracy of the altitude data and the quality of the surface morphology representation. The geostatistical analysis showed that there are no significant differences between the DEMs regarding the altitude values excepting the ASTER and SRTM DEM but the analysis of the topographic profiles and the comparison with field data demonstrated that the best DEMs are the model generated by Topo to Raster function and the SPOT DEM.