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A comparison of vertical accuracy of global DEMs and DEMs produced by GEDI, ICESat-2

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Abstract

Digital elevation models (DEM) are an essential data source in many professional disciplines, with the help of gridded height information and values such as slope and aspect produced from that information. In this study, Ice, Cloud and land Elevation Satellite-2 (ICESat-2) and Global Ecosystem Dynamics Investigation (GEDI) satellite-altimetry data, and SRTM, ASTER-GDEM, and ALOS World3D data were used as Global DEMs (GDEMs) data in three different areas (U.S.A., New Zealand and Puerto Rico). We used kriging methods for interpolation to create the new rasters. Point-based accuracies were compared with the GDEMs from satellite-altimetry systems and raster-based comparisons were made by deriving DEMs with satellite-altimetry data in three different areas. It was seen that the ICESat-2 data in point-based results had similar accuracy with other GDEMs. DEMs produced by using ICESat-2 and GEDI data together gave relatively better results than using alone. In particular, the correlation was found to be highly correlated with 99%.

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Data availability statement

The datasets generated during and/or analysed during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.

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Acknowledgements

The study consists of the Ph.D. thesis of the first author.

Funding

This research was supported by the Afyon Kocatepe University (Project Number: 22.FEN.BİL.02).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Geomatics Engineering Department, Afyon Kocatepe University, 03100, Afyonkarahisar, Turkey

    Omer Gokberk Narin & Mevlut Gullu

  2. Department of Geoscience and Remote Sensing, Delft University of Technology, PO Box 5048, 2600GA, Delft, the Netherlands

    Omer Gokberk Narin

Authors
  1. Omer Gokberk Narin
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  2. Mevlut Gullu
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The authors have equal contributions.

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Correspondence to Omer Gokberk Narin.

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Communicated by: H. Babaie

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Appendix

Appendix

Table 7

Table 7 Result information of ground truth data. Light blue lines show point-based results, light green areas show raster-based results
Full size table

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Narin, O.G., Gullu, M. A comparison of vertical accuracy of global DEMs and DEMs produced by GEDI, ICESat-2. Earth Sci Inform 16, 2693–2707 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12145-023-01060-1

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