The secrets of terrain modelling are revealed by Richard Windrow, one of the world's leading modellers. Everything from castles to the destruction wrought upon modern cities by war is covered in this accessible book. Explore the difficulties of creating a desert landscape, from the sandstone of Arizona to the wastelands of North Africa. Discover the handiwork needed to create the barbed wire death traps of No-Man's Land and the wilderness of Russia in winter. The variety of seasons, environments and historical periods are detailed in over 200 step-by-step photographs answering a modeller's 'how to' questions. Accompanying these photographs is an invaluable guide to the materials and techniques needed to create top-quality terrain, providing the essential reference volume for the military and non-military modeller alike.
The secrets of terrain modelling are revealed by Richard Windrow, one of the world's leading modellers. Everything from castles to the destruction wrought upon modern cities by war is covered in this accessible book. Explore the difficulties of creating a desert landscape, from the sandstone of Arizona to the wastelands of North Africa. Discover the handiwork needed to create the barbed wire death traps of No-Man's Land and the wilderness of Russia in winter. The variety of seasons, environments and historical periods are detailed in over 200 step-by-step photographs answering a modeller's 'how to' questions. Accompanying these photographs is an invaluable guide to the materials and techniques needed to create top-quality terrain, providing the essential reference volume for the military and non-military modeller alike.
A digital elevation model (DEM) is a digital representation of ground surface topography or terrain. It is also widely known as a digital terrain model (DTM). A DEM can be represented as a raster (a grid of squares) or as a vector based triangular irregular network (TIN). DEMs are commonly built using remote sensing techniques, but they may also be built from land surveying. DEMs are used often in geographic information systems, and are the most common basis for digitally-produced relief maps. The terrain surface can be described as compromising of two different elements; random and systematic. The random (stochastic) elements are the continuous surfaces with continuously varying relief. It would take an endless number of points to describe exactly the random terrain shapes, but these can be described in practice with a network of point. It is usual to use a network that creates sloping triangles or regular quadrants. This book examines how the methods and data sources used to generate DEMs and calculate land surface parameters have changed over the past 25 years. The primary goal is to describe the state-of-the-art for a typical digital terrain modeling workflow that starts with data capture, continues with data preprocessing and DEM generation, and concludes with the calculation of one or more primary and secondary land surface parameters. Taken as a whole, this book covers the basic theory behind the methods, the instrumentation, analysis and interpretation that are embedded in the modern digital terrain modeling workflow, the strengths and weaknesses of the various methods that the terrain analyst must choose among, typical applications of the results emanating from these terrain modeling workflows, and future directions. This book is intended for researchers and practitioners who wish to use DEMs, land surface parameters, land surface objects and landforms in environmental projects. The book will also be valuable as a reference text for environmental scientists who are specialists in related fields and wish to integrate these kinds of digital terrain workflows and outputs into their own specialized work environments.
In the framework of the Terrafirma project, Persistent Scatterers Interferometry (PSI) has be used for mapping land subsidence at basin scale in Gioia Tauro plain (Italy). The investigated area is built over unconsolidated fine-grained sediments, where the increasing groundwater demands for irrigation have caused the natural sediment consolidation to progressively accelerate. Both historical (1992-2001; ERS1/2 images) and recent (2002-2006; ENVISAT images) scenarios are analyzed to solve the spatial variability and temporal evolution of ground displacements affecting the plain. The results show deformation rates as high as 10-12 mm/yr in 1992-2007, with highest velocities occurred between 1992 and 2000 within the central part of the basin, in the area of Rizziconi (5 km ESE of Gioia Tauro). The outcomes of this PSI study could support the future improvement of groundwater management and the implementation of best strategies for land use planning and sustainable use of groundwater resources.
This publication is the first book on the development and application of digital terrain modeling for regional planning and policy support. It is a compilation of research results by international research groups at the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre, providing scientific support to the development and implementation of EU environmental policy. This practice-oriented book is recommended reading for practising environmental modelers and GIS experts working on regional planning and policy support applications.
Written by experts, Digital Terrain Modeling: Principles and Methodology provides comprehensive coverage of recent developments in the field. The topics include terrain analysis, sampling strategy, acquisition methodology, surface modeling principles, triangulation algorithms, interpolation techniques, on-line and off-line quality control in data a
