Abstract
The Shuttle Radar Topography Mission (SRTM) has resulted in the construction of the first publicly available near-global high resolution digital elevation model (DEM). The utility of this DEM, as for any geospatial data set, is a function of its quality. This paper is concerned with the assessment of SRTM accuracy and its relationship to land cover. Two methods—one raster-based and one point-based—are compared to match "finished" three-arc-second SRTM data to high precision, high accuracy surveyed elevations, as well as a corresponding DEM from the USGS National Elevation Dataset (NED). Differences between the two methodologies were not found to be significant. Error for the study site is substantially less than the mission objective, but substantially more than that for the NED. Significant overestimation of actual elevations pervades the SRTM DEM, and the overestimation is significantly higher in forested areas. This systematic error has implications both for applications employing SRTM data and for research on elevation data error modeling.
Published Version
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