A multi-sensor approach towards a global vegetation corrected SRTM DEM product

We develop the first global ‘Bare-Earth’ Digital Elevation Model (DEM) based on the Shuttle Radar Topography Mission (SRTM) for all landmasses between 60N and 54S. Our new ‘Bare-Earth’ SRTM DEM combines multiple remote sensing datasets, including point-ground elevations from NASA's laser altime...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Remote sensing of environment 2016-09, Vol.182, p.49-59
Main Authors: O'Loughlin, F.E., Paiva, R.C.D., Durand, M., Alsdorf, D.E., Bates, P.D.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Artefacts
Bare-Earth
DEM
Digital Elevation Model
Digital Elevation Models
Elevation
Floods
ICESat
Remote sensing
SRTM
Topography
Vegetation
Vegetation correction
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Summary:We develop the first global ‘Bare-Earth’ Digital Elevation Model (DEM) based on the Shuttle Radar Topography Mission (SRTM) for all landmasses between 60N and 54S. Our new ‘Bare-Earth’ SRTM DEM combines multiple remote sensing datasets, including point-ground elevations from NASA's laser altimeter ICESat, a database of percentage of tree cover from the MODIS satellite as a proxy for penetration depth of SRTM and a global vegetation height map in order to remove the vegetation artefacts present in the original SRTM DEM. We test multiple methods of removing vegetation artefacts and investigate the use of regionalization. Our final ‘Bare-Earth’ SRTM product shows global improvements greater than 10m in the bias over the original SRTM DEM in vegetated areas compared with ground elevations determined from ICESat data with a significant reduction in the root mean square error from over 14m to 6m globally. Therefore, our DEM will be valuable for any global applications, such as large scale flood modelling requiring a ‘Bare-Earth’ DEM. •We present the first attempt at creating a global ‘Bare-Earth’ SRTM DEM.•A novel multi-sensor approach is used to remove the vegetation biases in SRTM.•Vegetation biases are reduced from 14.1m to 5.9m using our method.
ISSN:0034-4257
1879-0704
DOI:10.1016/j.rse.2016.04.018