Geographia Technica, Vol 16, Issue 1, 2021, pp. 39-47

APPLICATION OF GIS IN THE DETERMINATION OF VERTICAL RELIEF FRAGMENTATION: A CASE STUDY ON DRENICA RIVER BASIN (KOSOVO)

Albert BERILA  , Florim ISUFI 

DOI: 10.21163/GT_2021.161.04

ABSTRACT: Advances in Remote Sensing (Digital Elevation Models) products and GIS techniques have made the calculation and analysis of morphometric indices much more accurate, effective, and less time- consuming. The energy of relief is a morphometric parameter that indicates the vertical variety of relief and represents the potential energy of a given terrain. Calculating morphometric parameters by manual methods is inconvenient because it takes a long time, is subject to mistakes that can be made by humans when extracting these parameters and, consequently leads to wrong conclusions. There is currently no fully automated method to calculate this parameter. The purpose of this paper is to define the procedures for extracting this parameter within a GIS environment using data from high resolution (HR) ALOS-PALSAR (Advanced Land Observing Satellite-Phased Array-Type L-band Synthetic Aperture Radar) Radiometrically Terrain Corrected (RTC) DEM with a spatial resolution of 12.5 m with the help of ArcGIS software. To calculate this parameter, a grid with 1x1 km cells with interpolation points in each cell was constructed. IDW was chosen as the most suitable method for the interpolation of points. Based on the obtained results, the maximum value of relief’s energy for the Drenica River basin reaches 328 m/km2. 57.19% of the surface belongs to the low and very low values of relief’s energy, 42.72% belongs to the average values while only 0.09% belongs to the high values. The high participation of very small and small values of this parameter for the Drenica River basin indicates that the total area is increasing towards the creation of flat surfaces. The importance of deriving this parameter is reflected in the fact that the data obtained are quantitative (have numerical value), can be verified and applicable in practice for the purposes of the construction sector, tourism, spatial planning, etc.


Keywords: GIS, energy of relief, ALOS-PALSAR DEM, geoprocessing, Drenica River basin.

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