Shuttle Radar Topography Mission

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The SRTM was flown on an 11-day mission of the Space Shuttle Endeavour in Februa
ry 2000.[1]
This NASA image used Landsat data to texture-map the surface created using SRTM
Elevation data. The Cape Peninsula and Cape of Good Hope, South Africa, are visi
ble in the foreground.[1]
The Shuttle Radar Topography Mission (SRTM) is an international research effort
that obtained digital elevation models on a near-global scale from 56 S to 60 N,[2
] to generate the most complete high-resolution digital topographic database of
Earth prior to the release of the ASTER GDEM in 2009. SRTM consisted of a specia
lly modified radar system that flew on board the Space Shuttle Endeavour during
the 11-day STS-99 mission in February 2000, based on the older Spaceborne Imagin
g Radar-C/X-band Synthetic Aperture Radar (SIR-C/X-SAR), previously used on the
Shuttle in 1994. To acquire topographic (elevation) data, the SRTM payload was o
utfitted with two radar antennas.[2] One antenna was located in the Shuttle's pa
yload bay, the other a critical change from the SIR-C/X-SAR, allowing single-pas
s interferometry on the end of a 60-meter (200-foot) mast[2] that extended from
the payload bay once the Shuttle was in space. The technique employed is known a
s Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar.
The elevation models are arranged into tiles, each covering one degree of latitu
de and one degree of longitude, named according to their south western corners.
It follows that "n45e006" stretches from 45N 6E to 46N 7E and "s45w006" from 45S 6W to
44S 5W. The resolution of the raw data is one arcsecond (30 m), but this has only
been released over United States territory. A derived one arcsecond dataset (wi
th trees and other non-terrain features removed) covering Australia was made ava
ilable in November 2011; the raw data are restricted for government use.[3] For
the rest of the world, only three arcsecond (90 m) data are available.[4] Each o
ne arcsecond tile has 3,601 rows, each consisting of 3,601 16 bit bigendian cell
s. The dimensions of the three arcsecond tiles are 1201 x 1201. The original SRT
M elevations were calculated relative to the WGS84 ellipsoid and then the EGM96
geoid separation values were added to convert to heights relative to the geoid f
or all the released products.[5]
The elevation models derived from the SRTM data are used in Geographic Informati
on Systems. They can be downloaded freely over the Internet, and their file form
at (.hgt) is supported by several software developments.
The Shuttle Radar Topography Mission is an international project spearheaded by
the U.S. National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) and the U.S. National Aer
onautics and Space Administration (NASA).
Contents
1 No-data areas
2 Void-filled SRTM datasets
3 Users
4 See also
5 Notes
6 References
7 External links
No-data areas
SRTM void filling with spline interpolation in GRASS GIS.
The elevation datasets are affected by mountain and desert no-data areas. These
amount to no more than 0.2% of the total area surveyed,[6] but can be a problem
in areas of very high relief. They affect all summits over 8,000 meters, most su
mmits over 7,000 meters, many Alpine and similar summits and ridges, and many go
rges and canyons. There are some SRTM data sources which have filled these data
voids, but some of these have used only interpolation from surrounding data, and
may therefore be very inaccurate. If the voids are large, or completely cover s
ummit or ridge areas, no interpolation algorithms will give satisfactory results
. Other developers, including NASA World Wind and Google Earth, have improved th
eir results by using 1-arc-second for the United States and 3-arc-second for the
rest of the world, data in the interpolation process, but, due to the poor reso
lution of these data, and very poor quality of some of them, they have further i
mproved their earth viewing services by adding data from other sources. Readers
with Google Earth software can examine an example of the most recent results by
clicking on 2759'14?N 8655'31?E (Mount Everest) and tilting the image.
Void-filled SRTM datasets
Relief map of Sierra Nevada
Example of relief map from SRTM1 (central Nevada)
Groups of scientists have worked on algorithms to fill the voids of the original
SRTM data. Two datasets offer global coverage void-filled SRTM data at full res
olution: the CGIAR-CSI versions and the USGS HydroSHEDS dataset. The CGIAR-CSI v
ersion 4 provides the best global coverage full resolution SRTM dataset. The Hyd
roSHEDS dataset was generated for hydrological applications and is suitable for
consistent drainage and water flow information. References are provided on the a
lgorithms used and quality assessment. The void-filled SRTM data from Viewfinder
Panoramas are high quality at full SRTM resolution. Since November 2012 there i
s free and global coverage at 3 arc seconds available.
In November 2013, LP DAAC released the NASA Shuttle Radar Topography Mission (SR
TM) Version 3.0 (SRTM Plus) Product collection with all voids eliminated. Voids
were filled primarily from ASTER GDEM2, and secondarily from USGS GMTED2010 or U
SGS National Elevation Dataset (NED) for the United States (except Alaska) and n
orthernmost Mexico according to the announcement.
Users
In early June 2011, there were 750,000 confirmed users of SRTM topography datase
t. Users in 221 countries have accessed the site (everywhere except Western Saha
ra.)[7]
See also
Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar
Digital elevation model
National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency
Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer
SRTM Water Body Data
WorldDEM private data with higher resolution, from newer satellite TerraSAR-
X-TanDEM-X
Notes
"Shuttle Radar Topography Mission: Mission to Map the World". Retrieved 2009
-04-26.
Nikolakopoulos 2006, p. 2
"SRTM-derived 1 Second Digital Elevation Models Version 1.0".
Nikolakopoulos 2006, p. 3
Hirt, C.; Filmer, M.S.; Featherstone, W.E. (2010). "Comparison and validatio
n of recent freely-available ASTER-GDEM ver1, SRTM ver4.1 and GEODATA DEM-9S ver
3 digital elevation models over Australia.". Australian Journal of Earth Science
s 57 (3): 337347. Bibcode:2010AuJES..57..337H. doi:10.1080/08120091003677553. Ret
rieved May 5, 2012.
Reuter H.I, A. Nelson, A. Jarvis, 2007, An evaluation of void filling interp
olation methods for SRTM data, International Journal of Geographic Information S
cience, 21:9, 9831008 'the finished grade version of the data (also referred to as
Version 2) still contains data voids (some 836,000 km^2)'; 836,000 is 0.164% of
the Earth's 5.110^8 km^2 surface
http://dapa.ciat.cgiar.org/dapas-srtm-topography-data-reaches-750000-users/
References
Nikolakopoulos, K. G.; Kamaratakis, E. K; Chrysoulakis, N. (10 November 2006
). "SRTM vs ASTER elevation products. Comparison for two regions in Crete, Greec
e". International Journal of Remote Sensing 27 (21). ISSN 0143-1161. Retrieved M
arch 10, 2010.
Farr, Tom G.; Rosen, Paul A.; Caro, Edward; Crippen, Robert; Duren, Riley; H
ensley, Scott; Kobrick, Michael; Paller, Mimi; Rodriguez, Ernesto; Roth, Ladisla
v; Seal, David; Shaffer, Scott; Shimada, Joanne; Umland, Jeffrey; Werner, Marian
; Oskin, Michael; Burbank, Douglas; Alsdorf, Douglas (2007). "The Shuttle Radar
Topography Mission". Reviews of Geophysics 45 (2): RG2004. Bibcode:2007RvGeo..45
.2004F. doi:10.1029/2005RG000183.
Hirt, C.; Filmer, M.S.; Featherstone, W.E. (2010). "Comparison and validatio
n of recent freely-available ASTER-GDEM ver1, SRTM ver4.1 and GEODATA DEM-9S ver
3 digital elevation models over Australia.". Australian Journal of Earth Science
s 57 (3): 337347. Bibcode:2010AuJES..57..337H. doi:10.1080/08120091003677553. Ret
rieved May 5, 2012.
Rexer, M.; Hirt, C. (2014). "Comparison of free high-resolution digital elev
ation data sets (ASTER GDEM2, SRTM v2.1/v4.1) and validation against accurate he
ights from the Australian National Gravity Database.". Australian Journal of Ear
th Sciences 61 (2). doi:10.1080/08120099.2014.884983. Retrieved April 24, 2014.
Hennig, T., Kretsch, J, Salamonowicz, P, Pessagno, C, and Stein, W., The Shuttle
Radar Topography Mission, Proceedings of the First International Symposium on D
igital Earth Moving 2001, Springer Verlag, London, UK.
External links
Official NASA SRTM site (SRTM V1 and V2)
NASA MEaSUREs Products (SRTM V3 and more)
NASA's server with SRTM data tiles Please read the accompanying documentatio
n
Digital elevation data from Geoscience Australia arcsecond-resolution derive
d data covering Australia
Maps-For-Free.com Free global relief maps
GeoSAR, the Testbed for SRTM Currently owned and operated by Fugro EarthData
1-Degree SRTM data tiles in GeoTIFF format UMD's Global Land Cover Facility
Void filled SRTM data at CGIAR-CSI and Droppr
USGS HydroSHEDS Full resolution SRTM-based DEM for hydrological applications
Software that can read and process SRTM data: 3dem, GRASS GIS, SAGA GIS, Map
Window GIS, DG Terrain Viewer/Void Killer, Virtual Terrain Project
Mapping data SRTM with fision tables
Viewfinder Panoramas Unofficial SRTM data with voids corrected using topogra
phic maps
Discussion forum for SRTM data users
Atlogis Meta-Maps: Online-Viewer for relief maps generated from SRTM-Data.
http://sourceforge.net/projects/srtm-matlab MATLAB-based SRTM reader
readhgt.m Matlab function to download/import SRTM data files
Categories:
Geographic information systems
Space radars
Digital elevation models
Synthetic aperture radar
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