Plan Curvature derived from 1" SRTM DEM-S

Plan (or contour) curvature is the rate of change of aspect (orthogonal to the slope) and represents topographic convergence or divergence. It is significant for water movement across the landscape, i.e., the accumulation or dispersion of water. The plan curvature products were derived from the Smoothed Digital Elevation Model (DEM-S; ANZCW0703014016), which was derived from the 1 second resolution SRTM data acquired by NASA in February 2000. The calculation of plan curvature from DEM-S accounted for the varying spacing between grid points in the geographic projection. The plan curvature data are available at 1 arc-second (approx. 30 m) and 3 arc-second (approx. 90 m) resolutions. The 3 arc-second resolution product was generated from the 1 arc-second plan curvature product and masked by the 3” water and ocean mask datasets.