Application of ASTER DEM in the Investigation of Tourism Resources and Environment

As digital topographic map, DEM contains numerous and various terrain structures and feature information, quantitatively describing basic data of space changes such as landscape structure, hydrological process and biological distribution. Based on the ASTER GDEM data, this paper extracts topographical factors in karst area such as slope, aspect, surface fluctuation degree and surface cutting depth, and comprehensively analyses the landform characteristics of karst area. Results show that with broken terrain, large surface slope, surface fluctuation degree and surface cutting depth, the studied area is typical carbonate area and the ecological environment is very fragile, which should be paid attention to strengthen environmental management and landscape protection, at the same time, this area has a large amount of high grade karst caves, river landscape and karst valley landscape, stone pillars and karst peak plexus which are widely distributed with geological landscape tourism resources´ tremendous potential to develop.