Data analysis of elevation standard deviation classifying geomorphological types

Relief degree of land surface is an important factor for representing the characteristics of landform. Up to now, unified methods and standards about classifying relief degree of land surface have not been established. The standard deviation of elevation values were calculated from the 1:50000 scales DEM data over Yangqu county of Taiyuan city, which are then used to describe the relief degree of land surface. Using this method of increasing gird window progressively in ArcMap software, elevation standard deviation values are computed. Data analysis show that 1km × 1km statistic unit is better size to make elevation standard deviation classes which are highly consistent with the land use status map which is interpreted from Landsat 7 ETM+ data.