VERTICAL ERROR ASSESSMENT OF SRTM AND AW3D30 ELEVATION MODELS USING ICESAT-2 PROFILES IN THE SOUTHERN PATAGONIAN ICEFIELD

VACAFLOR, PAULINA; LENZANO M. G; LANNUTTI, E

Workshop; Photogrammetric and computer vision techniques for video Surveillance, Biometrics and Biomedicine; 2023

The main goal of the present work is to quantify the altitudinal differences between ICESat-2 data and two global DEMs with the objective of analyzing the relationships that may exist between those errors with slope, aspect, and along the altitudinal range. We propose to evaluate these relationships and their implications in glaciological studies. Note that due to the high accuracy of ICESat-2 elevations, we considered the elevation differences as an estimation of the DEMs' vertical errors. The study was carried out in part of the Southern Patagonian Icefield (SPI, Figure 1), the largest continuous ice mass in the southern hemisphere outside Antarctica. During the last century, the Patagonian Andean glaciers have suffered strong retreat with an accelerated trend at the beginning of the 21st century (Aniya et al., 1992; Vacaflor et al., 2022, and others). From this, ice elevation changes (2000–2019) were derived by the comparison of the SRTM (Shuttle Radar Topography Mission) digital elevation model with ICESat-2 elevation data points.