Modelling Uncertainty of Stream Networks Derived from.pdfVIP

Journal of Geographic Information System, 2012, 4, 153-160 /10.4236/jgis.2012.42020 Published Online April 2012 (http://www.SciRP.org/journal/jgis) Modelling Uncertainty of Stream Networks Derived from Elevation Data Using Two Free Softwares: R and SAGA 1 2 3 1 Hammadi Achour , Noamen Rebai , Jean Van Den Driessche , Samir Bouaziz 1Laboratoire 3E, Ecole Nationale des Ingénieurs de Sfax, Sfax, Tunisia 2Unité de Recherche Dynamique des Bassins Sédimentaires, Paléoenvironnements et Structures Géologiques, Département de Géologie, Faculté des Sciences de Tunis, Université Tunis El Manar, Tunis, Tunisie 3Compus de Beaulieu, Université de Rennes, Rennes, France Email: hammadi.achour@ Received December 24, 2011; revised February 3, 2012; accepted February 20, 2012 ABSTRACT Stream networks are considered important units in many environmental decision making processes. The extraction of streams using digital elevation models (DEMs) presents many advantages. However it is very sensitive to the uncer- tainty of the elevation datasets used. The main aim of this paper is to implement geostatistical simulations and assess the propagated uncertainty and map the error of location streams. First, point sampled elevations are used to fit a variogram model. Next two hundred DEM realizations are generated using conditional sequential Gaussian simulation; the stream network map is extracted for each of these realizations, and the collection of stream networks is analyzed to quantify the error propagation. At each grid cell, the probability of the occurrence of a stream and the propagated error are estimated. Th