THE ANALYSIS OF THE RITO ALTO WATERSHED

The Rito Alto watershed is located in the Sangre de Cristo Mountain Range in Colorado. The relief in the watershed varies between ~ 300-500 m. The objective of this study is to determine the spatial resolution of the Digital Elevation Model (DEM) that is best suited to capture the nature and characteristics of the terrain in our watershed. For this purpose, we compare a total of three DEMs. The first is a DEM is a 12 m in resolution, and is derived from a 1:24000 topographic map (using the Topo to Raster function), the second is a 30 m resolution USGS DEM and the third a 1 m resolution DEM derived from a LiDAR point cloud. To compare the DEMs, we will calculate slope, aspect and curvature rasters using each of the three DEMs.