Review of Digital Elevation Model (DEM) Based Research on China Loess Plateau

The Loess Plateau is one of the hot research areas for its specific geographical features. In resent years, with the establishment of national multi-scale DEMs and the perfection of DEM based digital terrain analysis methods, new thoughts and methodologies have been constructed for the Loess Plateau research. This paper introduces the characteristics of DEM data, analyses the development stages of DEM applied in the Loess Plateau research, and discusses its further possible research direction. More discussions are focused on slope spectrum and its concept, as well as the significance in the Loess Plateau research.