Journal of The Korean Society of Agricultural Engineers (한국농공학회논문집)

The Korean Society of Agricultural Engineers (한국농공학회)
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Evaluating Applicability of SRTM DEM (Shuttle Radar Topography Mission Digital Elevation Model) in Hydrologic Analysis: A Case Study of Geum River and Daedong River Areas

수문인자추출에서의 SRTM DEM (Shuttle Radar Topography Mission Digital Elevation Model) 적용성 평가: 대동강 및 금강 지역 사례연구

  • Her, Younggu (Department of Agricultural and Biological Engineering, Purdue University) ;
  • Yoo, Seung-Hwan (Department of Agricultural and Biological Engineering, Purdue University)
  • Received : 2013.07.30
  • Accepted : 2013.10.22
  • Published : 2013.11.30
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Abstract

Shuttle Radar Topography Mission Digital Elevation Model (SRTM DEM) offers opportunities to make advances in many research areas including hydrology by providing near-global scale elevation measurements at a uniform resolution. Its wide coverage and complimentary online access especially benefits researchers requiring topographic information of hard-to-access areas. However, SRTM DEM also contains inherent errors, which are subject to propagation with its manipulation into analysis outputs. Sensitivity of hydrologic analysis to the errors has not been fully understood yet. This study investigated their impact on estimation of hydrologic derivatives such as slope, stream network, and watershed boundary using Monte Carlo simulation and spatial moving average techniques. Different amount of the errors and their spatial auto-correlation structure were considered in the study. Two sub-watersheds of Geum and Deadong River areas located in South and North Korea, respectively, were selected as the study areas. The results demonstrated that the spatial presentations of stream networks and watershed boundaries and their length and area estimations could be greatly affected by the SRTM DEM errors, in particular relatively flat areas. In the Deadong River area, artifacts of the SRTM DEM created sinks even after the filling process and then closed drainage basin and short stream lines, which are not the case in the reality. These findings provided an evidence that SRTM DEM alone may not enough to accurately figure out the hydrologic feature of a watershed, suggesting need of local knowledge and complementary data.

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References

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