DEM in quantitative analysis of structural geomorphology: application and prospect

Digital elevation model (DEM) is used to realize the digital simulation of terrain surface (i.e. the digital representation of terrain surface shape) through the limited terrain elevation data. As a new tool to describe the terrain, it provides a new field of vision for people to study the evolution process of the earth's surface. The application status of DEM in many fields are summerized in this paper, including basic topographic factors, watershed geomorphological features, reconstruction of paleogeomorphology, tectonic geomorphological development model, tectonic activity classification, geomorphological classification and environmental assessment, geomorphological parameter algorithms and computing platform development. Our research generally focuses on land, with river geomorphology and mountain geomorphology as the main objects. The research process changes from the early qualitative description of geomorphology to the semi-quantitative and quantitative analysis of a variety of geomorphological paramet