ORIGINAL ARTICLE Suitability of spaceborne digital elevation models of different scales in topographic analysis: an example from Kerala, India Jobin Thomas • V. Prasannakumar • P. Vineetha Received: 28 May 2013 / Accepted: 20 June 2014 / Published online: 12 July 2014 Ó Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2014 Abstract Digital elevation model (DEM), deriving con- ventionally from contour data of topographic maps, pro- vides sufficient information regarding the continuously varying topographic surface of the Earth. Though space- borne DEMs are increasingly being used in earth-envir- onmental-applications, suitability of various freely available spaceborne DEMs [e.g., advanced spaceborne thermal emission and reflection (ASTER), shuttle radar topography mapping mission (SRTM), global multi-reso- lution terrain elevation data (GMTED)] for topographic and geomorphometric analyzes in tropical regions is yet to be ascertained. In this paper, comparability of these spaceborne DEMs among themselves and also with the DEM (TOPO) prepared from digital contour data of topographic maps is assessed. Results show that various primary and secondary derivatives of ASTER and SRTM DEMs provide relatively better precision and substantial agreement with the corresponding parameters derived from TOPO. Among the spaceborne DEMs, SRTM has rela- tively higher vertical accuracy (root mean square error = 17.05 m), compared to ASTER (24.09 m) and GMTED (32.85 m). The vertical accuracy of all the spaceborne DEMs strongly depends on the relief and rug- gedness of the terrain as well as the type of vegetation. It is proposed that in the absence of other available and acceptable elevation datasets, SRTM and ASTER are equally competent for geomorphometric analysis in tropi- cal regions, while GMTED shows significant loss of terrain information due to coarser spatial resolution. Keywords Digital elevation model  Geomorphometry  DEM accuracy Introduction Topography has a vital role in various earth and environ- mental processes and hence the quality of topographic attributes attains greater significance in terrain analysis and other spatial applications. Topographic information was conventionally gathered from maps of varying scales, which has restricted their applications in geomorphology and hydrology due to tiresome, biased, labor-intensive and expensive processes of data collection (Speight 1977; Dragut and Blaschke 2006; van Niekerk 2010). On the contrary, in recent years, digital elevation model (DEM) has been widely used for 3D representation of topography and derivation of various topographic attributes in terrain analysis (Pike 2000; Wilson and Gallant 2000; Oguchi et al. 2003; Masoud and Koike 2011; Romstad and Etzel- muller 2012), soil and vegetation mapping (Horsch 2003; Dobos and Hengl 2009; Jelaska 2009; Cavazzi et al. 2013), mapping and modelling of natural hazards (Huggel et al. 2008; Gruber et al. 2009; Demirkesen 2012), hydraulic, hydrologic and geomorphologic modelling (Tarboton et al. 1992; Hancock et al. 2006; Peckham 2009; Gichamo et al. 2012; Wang et al. 2012; Schwanghart et al. 2013; Barnes et al. 2014), watershed modelling and erosion assessment (Renschler et al. 2002; Valeriano et al. 2006; Park et al. 2011; Kinsey-Henderson and Wilkinson 2013), morpho- metric analysis (Ozdemir and Bird 2009; Guth 2011; Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (doi:10.1007/s12665-014-3478-0) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. J. Thomas (&)  V. Prasannakumar  P. Vineetha Inter University Center for Geospatial Information Science and Technology, University of Kerala, Thiruvananthapuram 695 581, Kerala, India e-mail: jobinenv@gmail.com 123 Environ Earth Sci (2015) 73:1245–1263 DOI 10.1007/s12665-014-3478-0