Evaluating the Spatial Resolution of Digital Elevation Models (DEMs) on the Accuracy of Rainfall Estimation at the Annual Scale

Users prepare accurate data of the amount of rainfall by using rain gauge stations. However, an interpolation of rainfall data is difficult due to temporal and spatial variability. Therefore, rain gauge stations are not well distributed in many areas, especially in mountainous areas. In a mountainous area, understanding the interaction between the resolution of the Digital Elevation Model (DEM) and climate variables is necessary for accurate spatial interpolation of average rainfall in many areas, and on the other hand, the need for accurate information in hydrological modeling and many environmental studies and it is climatic. One of the problems that exists in many hydrological studies is that rainfall maps are always prepared using interpolation or available DEM, regardless of rainfall, which have an estimated rainfall error.

In this study, four DEMs with spatial resolutions of 30, 90, 1000, and 10000 m, which are the most common DEMs in studies, were used to introduce the best elevation digital model for extracting the rainfall gradient map from the data of 11 meteorological stations in Kermanshah province. A rainfall map for Kermanshah province was prepared using a linear regression model fitted between the height of each station and the 20-year average rainfall. The best DEM for rainfall estimation was then determined on the basis of error evaluation criteria.

The results of this research showed that in estimating rainfall, DEMs with cell sizes of 1000 and 10000 m (R2 = 0.76, 0.81) were more accurate than DEMs with spatial accuracy of 30 and 90 m (R2 = 0.75). In the examination of the Nash–Sutcliffe coefficient (NS), compared to other digital height models of accuracy, DEM with a spatial resolution of 1000 m (one km) with a Nash–Sutcliffe coefficient of 0.76, a significance level of 0.01, and a correlation coefficient of 0.81 was found to have greater accuracy.

The results of the present study can be used to estimate and generalize rainfall in areas that do not have stations and to prepare rainfall maps in areas where the number of stations is limited. In addition, it should be used in univariate interpolation methods that do not have proper accuracy because spatial distances are not considered. In addition, due to the complex topography of the earth and the non-uniformity of meteorological stations on the earth’s surface, high-resolution models with higher spatial resolution are required for the estimation of rainfall, which increases the accuracy of digital models in the evaluation of rainfall studies by removing topographical levels that cause errors.