Surface area calculation for DEM-based terrain model

Abstract

The surface area calculation is meaningful for a variety of space-filling phenomena, for example the packing of plants or animals within an area of land. An integral method for calculating the landscape surface area is proposed by considering the curvature of terrain and the measurement errors in Digital Elevation Model (DEM) data. Applying the least squares method, with the DEM data we estimate the first-order and second-order derivatives of the terrain surface to reduce the influence from the DEM data errors. It shows that the first-order derivatives estimated are statistically independent to the second-order derivatives estimated when using a symmetrical configuration composed of a series of DEM points. The surface area within a polygonal region is obtained by partitioning the polygonal region into a series of squares, rectangles and triangles. The proposed method is compared with the triangle-based methods and the results show that the proposed method is more robust.