What is the primary function of a digital elevation model (DEM) in geospatial analysis?

A digital elevation model (DEM) primarily serves to represent elevation changes over terrain, making it an essential tool in geospatial analysis. DEMs convert terrain features into a digital format, allowing for a detailed analysis of relief and elevation across a given area. This representation facilitates various applications, including hydrological modeling, land-use planning, and environmental assessments, as understanding the topography is critical to these analyses.

The ability to visualize data in three dimensions helps analysts understand watershed boundaries, slope stability, and potential flood zones, enhancing decision-making processes in both urban and rural planning. DEMs are invaluable in any analysis requiring an understanding of landscape features such as mountains, valleys, and plains because they provide the foundational spatial data needed to compute gradients, aspect, and viewsheds.

In comparison to other options, capturing non-spatial attributes, providing demographic information, and encoding structural data do not directly relate to the primary function of a DEM, which is fundamentally focused on terrain representation. Thus, the emphasis is strictly on how variations in elevation can impact both natural and human systems.