Abstract
In this paper, a digital elevation model (DEM) was produced for Lop Nur playa produced with the data from TanDEM-X mission. The spatial resolution is 10 m. It covers an area of 38,000 km2 for orthometric height from 785 m to 900 m above sea level, which is composed of 42 interferometric synthetic aperture radar (InSAR) scenes. A least-square adjustment approach was used to reduce the systematic errors in each DEM scene. The DEM produced was validated with data from other sensors including Ice, Cloud, and land Elevation Satellite (ICESat) Geoscience Laser Altimeter System (GLAS) and aerial Structure-from-Motion (SfM) DEM. The results show that global elevation root mean square error to GLAS is 0.57 m, and the relative height error to SfM DEM in complicated terrain is 3 m. The excellent height reliability of TanDEM InSAR DEM in Lop region was proved in this paper. A reliable high-resolution basic topographic dataset for researches of Lop Nur was provided.
Highlights
Lop Nur used to be the terminal lake of all rivers in the Tarim Basin but had been desiccated since 1973 [1]
42 TanDEM-X/TerraSAR-X Coregistered Single look Slant range Complex (CoSSC) [25] image pairs from the TanDEM-X mission, which is supported by DLR TanDEM-X science coordination project of OTHER6906 and ATI HYDR7333, are used to generate the target digital elevation model (DEM)
The global Root Mean Square Error (RMSE) of the DEM is 0.57 m, which is in the range of TanDEM-X DEM accuracy specification of 2 m when slope is less than 20% [13]
Summary
Lop Nur used to be the terminal lake of all rivers in the Tarim Basin but had been desiccated since 1973 [1]. The remaining playa is located in the northwestern China between latitude 39∘N and 41∘and longitude 89∘E and 92∘E It is important for studying the interaction between ancient human activities and paleoclimate change, especially after the discovery of Loulan city of Chinese Han Dynasty in 1901 by Hedin [2]. His proposed wandering lake theory [2], which believed the ancient Lake Lop Nur would alternate its lake basin between depressions in this region according to elevation difference derived from erosion and accumulation [3], had been controversial among the international Earth science community for nearly a century [4]. The debate and other paleo-environment researches, such as determination of the lake boundary, discovery of paleo river channel, and building a 3D hydrodynamic model, all require high-resolution fullcoverage topographic materials [5, 6].
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