Quantifying the spatial associations of terrain parameters from digital elevation models

Terrain parameters describe the morphological characteristics of the surface and are an important part of the application of geoscience. Their extraction and analysis are also important aspects of geoscience research. At present, there are many kinds of terrain parameters, but there is still a lack of scientific and systematic research on the associations between terrain parameters. In this work, 14 representative terrain parameters are selected to explore their spatial association relationships by using the quantification methods of linear correlation degree, distribution similarity and influential degree. The mechanism of the association relationships among terrain parameters is also analyzed to achieve a better understanding in terrain analysis. This study found that the linear correlations between slope and surface roughness and between terrain relief and the standard deviation of elevation are strong. The distribution similarities between the terrain parameter pairs of plane curvature and profile curvature and terrain relief and the standard deviation of elevation are great. In addition, the upslope contributing area has a strong influence on the topographic wetness index, and slope has a strong influence on terrain roughness. We quantify the associations between terrain parameters, provides a new perspective to examine the associations of terrain parameters