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Sensitivity Assessment of Spatial Resolution Difference in DEM for Soil Erosion Estimation Based on UAV Observations: An Experiment on Agriculture Terraces in the Middle Hill of Nepal

Summary

To demonstrate the sensitivity of soil erosion estimates to DEM resolution at this high-resolution level, this study tries to evaluate soil erosion estimation in the Middle Hill agriculture terraces in Nepal based on UAV derived high-resolution (5 × 5 cm) DEM data and make a comparative study for the estimates by using the DEM data aggregated into different spatial resolutions (5 × 5 cm to 10 × 10 m).

The results indicated that there was a higher change rate in slope gradient, slope length, LS factor, and soil erosion rate when using DEM data with resolution from 5 × 5 cm to 2 × 2 m than using coarser DEM data. With insights about the influencing mechanism of DEM resolution on soil erosion estimates, this study provides important suggestions for appropriate DEM data selection that should be investigated first for accurate soil erosion estimation.

Categories:

Case Studies


Publisher:

MDPI


Published Year:

2021