COMPARATIVE STUDY OF TERRAIN CHARACTERIZATION USING DEM FROM TWO DIFFERENT SOURCES (SRTM & ASTER)

Remote Sensing and GIS recently had been extensively used in various spatial analyses for different parameters to understand the spatial characteristic to be used in decision making. Remote sensing and GIS provides us with various tools to be used in spati al analysis and one of the most important tools of these is Hydrological tool (Arc - hydro in ArcGIS). Hydrological tools had been used to understand the terrain of the surface and eventually the hydrological characteristics of the given area. In this study a comparative study had been carried out on drainage density using Digital elevation data of different sources that is SRTM with 90 meter resolution and Aster data with 30 meter resolution using the Arc - hydro tool of GIS. Study area is selected from Yamuna middle watershed of Uttarkashi District, Uttarakhand, India which provides a much variation in terrain condition including the elevation and is hard to access most of its areas. DEM has been processed separately for that of SRTM and ASTER and analyzed usi ng Arc - hydro tool of ArcGIS and Drainage density had been analyzed eventually and a comparatively study had been carried out to understand difference in results of the two DEM sources and understanding accuracy. All this spatial analysis is carried out und er the GIS environment to make analysis and evaluation easy and fast. Resent High resolution Remote sensing data is used for the assessment of accuracy and validation of the results.