High-quality seamless DEM generation blending SRTM-1, ASTER GDEM v2 and ICESat/GLAS observations

Abstract

The absence of a high-quality seamless global digital elevation model (DEM) dataset has been a challenge for the Earth-related research fields. Recently, the 1-arc-second Shuttle Radar Topography Mission (SRTM-1) data have been released globally, covering over 80% of the Earth’s land surface (60°N–56°S). However, voids and anomalies still exist in some tiles, which has prevented the SRTM-1 dataset from being directly used without further processing. In this paper, we propose a method to generate a seamless DEM dataset blending SRTM-1, ASTER GDEM v2, and ICESat laser altimetry data. The ASTER GDEM v2 data are used as the elevation source for the SRTM void filling. To get a reliable filling source, ICESat GLAS points are incorporated to enhance the accuracy of the ASTER data within the void regions, using an artificial neural network (ANN) model. After correction, the voids in the SRTM-1 data are filled with the corrected ASTER GDEM values. The triangular irregular network based delta surface fill (DSF) method is then employed to eliminate the vertical bias between them. Finally, an adaptive outlier filter is applied to all the data tiles. The final result is a seamless global DEM dataset. ICESat points collected from 2003 to 2009 were used to validate the effectiveness of the proposed method, and to assess the vertical accuracy of the global DEM products in China. Furthermore, channel networks in the Yangtze River Basin were also extracted for the data assessment.