Determining the optimal grid resolution for topographic analysis on an airborne lidar dataset

Smith, Taylor; Rheinwalt, Aljoscha; Bookhagen, Bodo

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/esurf-7-475-2019

Articles | Volume 7, issue 2

https://doi.org/10.5194/esurf-7-475-2019

© Author(s) 2019. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

https://doi.org/10.5194/esurf-7-475-2019

© Author(s) 2019. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Articles | Volume 7, issue 2

Research article

|

29 May 2019

Research article |

| 29 May 2019

Determining the optimal grid resolution for topographic analysis on an airborne lidar dataset

Taylor Smith, Aljoscha Rheinwalt, and Bodo Bookhagen

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Final revised paper (published on 29 May 2019)
Supplement to the final revised paper
Preprint (discussion started on 02 Jan 2019)
Supplement to the preprint

Interactive discussion

Status: closed

AC: Author comment | RC: Referee comment | SC: Short comment | EC: Editor comment

- Printer-friendly version

- Supplement

RC1: 'esurf-2018-96_rev', Anonymous Referee #1, 15 Jan 2019
RC2: 'review comments', Anonymous Referee #2, 18 Feb 2019
AC1: 'Reply to Reviewers', Taylor Smith, 26 Feb 2019

Peer-review completion

AR: Author's response | RR: Referee report | ED: Editor decision

AR by Taylor Smith on behalf of the Authors (26 Feb 2019) Author's response Manuscript

ED: Referee Nomination & Report Request started (27 Feb 2019) by Giulia Sofia

RR by Anonymous Referee #2 (02 Mar 2019)

RR by Marco Cavalli (05 Mar 2019)

RR by Anonymous Referee #3 (17 Mar 2019)

ED: Reconsider after major revisions (20 Mar 2019) by Giulia Sofia

AR by Taylor Smith on behalf of the Authors (25 Apr 2019) Author's response Manuscript

ED: Referee Nomination & Report Request started (26 Apr 2019) by Giulia Sofia

RR by Anonymous Referee #3 (08 May 2019)

ED: Publish as is (09 May 2019) by Giulia Sofia

ED: Publish as is (14 May 2019) by Tom Coulthard (Editor)

AR by Taylor Smith on behalf of the Authors (17 May 2019) Manuscript

Short summary

Representing the surface of the Earth on an equally spaced grid leads to errors and uncertainties in derived slope and aspect. Using synthetic data, we develop a quality metric that can be used to compare the uncertainties in different datasets. We then apply this method to a real-world lidar dataset, and find that 1 m data have larger error bounds than lower-resolution data. The highest data resolution is not always the best choice – it is important to consider the quality of the data.