Medium Resolution Digital Elevation Model From Natural Resources Canada’s CanElevation Series (MRDEM-30)

Abstract

Elevation data are a core theme provided by the Natural Resources Canada (NRCan) to Canadians as essential geographic information. Elevation data are a fundamental input for many types of studies and applications and also serve as a basemap for national maps and tile sets. The previous national medium resolution terrain and surface data have not been updated by NRCan since 2011. High-resolution digital elevation models (HRDEMs) are actively being produced by NRCan, but this initiative will take several more years before achieving complete coverage across all of Canada’s land mass. To create a new, modern Canada-wide medium resolution DEM (MRDEM), this work has combined satellite derived Copernicus GLO30 and the HRDEM derived from light detection and ranging (lidar) to produce three datasets: surface model, terrain model, and elevation source. The surface and terrain models contain lidar-derived elevation data where available (high resolution digital surface model (HRDSM) and high resolution digital terrain model (HRDTM)) and GLO30 elsewhere, while the source model raster provides an index, identifying the underlying elevation data source. To generate the terrain model, the GLO30 surface model data were combined with datasets of urban features and forest heights and a variety of geospatial operations were applied to remove features and structures above the ground, then it was fused with HRDTM.

Maxim Fortin

Water Resources Engineer

My professional interests include hydrological and hydraulic modeling, flood mapping and geospatial data analysis.