Terrain

Terrain, or land relief, is the vertical and horizontal dimension of land surface. When relief is described underwater, the term bathymetry is used. In America, topography has recently become an additional synonym, though in many parts of the world it retains its original more general meaning of description of place.

Terrain is used as a general term in physical geography, referring to the lay of the land. This is usually expressed in terms of the elevation, slope, and orientation of terrain features. Terrain affects surface water flow and distribution. Over a large area, it can affect weather and climate patterns.

Important Terms of Terrain

Anchor point Anchor points remain throughout all pyramid levels of a terrain dataset. They are never filtered or thinned away (e.g., benchmarks, bathymetry control points). Breakline A line in a TIN or terrain dataset that represents a distinct interruption in the slope of a surface by a ridge, road, or stream, for example. Triangles in a TIN or terrain dataset may not cross a breakline (i.e., breaklines are enforced as triangle edges). Z-values along a breakline can be constant or variable. Clipping polygon Polygons are used to define boundaries for terrain surfaces when a data area has an irregular shape. Without a clip polygon, the data area would be convex and produce errors in the surface. The triangulation would create long sliver triangles while attempting to connect points around the exterior of the area and generate errors in the surface. Constrained Delaunay A constrained Delaunay triangulation method follows traditional Delaunay rules everywhere except along breaklines. Using a traditional Delaunay triangulation method, breaklines are densified to ensure that the resultant triangulation remains Delaunay conforming. Therefore, one input breakline segment can result in multiple triangle edges. Using a constrained Delaunay triangulation, no densification occurs, and each breakline segment is added as a single edge. (See also Delaunay triangulation.) Delaunay triangulation A technique for creating a mesh of contiguous, nonoverlapping triangles from a dataset of points. Each triangle's circumscribing circle contains no points from the dataset in its interior. Delaunay triangulation was named for the Russian mathematician Boris Nikolaevich Delaunay. Face In a TIN or terrain dataset, a planar surface of a triangle bounded by three edges and three nodes. Faces do not overlap. Each face is adjacent to three other faces on the surface. A face defines a plane with an aspect and slope. LAS LAS (spell L-A-S) is an open/published standard file format for the interchange of lidar data. It is a binary file format that maintains specific information related to lidar data. It is a way for vendors and clients to interchange data and maintain all information specific to that data. Lidar Lidar (light detection and ranging) is a remote-sensing technique that uses laser light to densely sample the surface of the earth with x,y,z measurements. Lidar datasets produce mass point datasets that can be visualized and analyzed using a terrain dataset. Mass points A dataset containing points that are typically derived from data sources such as lidar, sonar, or photogrammetric data. Node One of the three corner points of a triangle in a TIN or terrain dataset, topologically linked to all triangles that meet there. Each sample point in a TIN or terrain dataset becomes a node in the triangulation that can store elevation z-values and tag values. Tags represent user-defined criteria about area. Overview terrain The coarsest representation of the terrain dataset, it is designed to draw rapidly when the display is zoomed at or beyond its full extent. Point spacing The most common distance between points used to construct a terrain dataset. Sonar Sonar (sound navigation and ranging) is an underwater mapping technique that uses sound waves to map the shape of the ocean floor. Sonar datasets produce mass point datasets that can be visualized and analyzed using a terrain dataset. Surface feature type Defines the role the feature class plays in defining the terrain dataset surface. The surface feature type (e.g., mass points, breaklines, various polygon types) are indicated when a feature class is added to a terrain. Terrain dataset A terrain dataset is a multiresolution, TIN-based surface built from measurements stored as features in a geodatabase. Terrain pyramid Levels of detail generated for a terrain dataset to improve efficiency. Terrain pyramids are generated through the process of point reduction or point thinning to reduce the number of measurements needed to represent a surface for a given area. Two pyramid types exist: z-tolerance and window size. Triangle A face on a TIN surface. Each triangle on a TIN surface is defined by three edges and three nodes and is adjacent to from one to three other triangles on the surface. TIN triangles can be used to derive aspect and slope information and can be attributed with tag values. Tags represent user-defined criteria about area. Triangulated irregular network (TIN) A vector data structure that partitions geographic space into contiguous, nonoverlapping triangles. The vertices of each triangle are sample data points with x-, y-, and z-values. These sample points are connected by lines to form Delaunay triangles. TINs are used to store and display surface models and as a background structure built on demand by terrains. Window-size pyramid The window-size pyramid type thins points based on horizontal sample density. Z-tolerance pyramid The z-tolerance pyramid type thins points based on vertical accuracy constraints. Tweet

                                                         (Source: Deus Philip J. Duran)

Importance

The understanding of terrain is critical for many reasons:

The terrain of a region largely determines its suitability for human settlement: flatter, alluvial plains tend to have better farming soils than steeper, rockier uplands.
In terms of environmental quality, agriculture, and hydrology, understanding the terrain of an area enables the understanding of watershed boundaries, drainage characteristics, water movement, and impacts on water quality. Complex arrays of relief data are used as input parameters for hydrology transport models (such as the SWMM or DSSAM Models) to allow prediction of river water quality.
Understanding terrain also supports on soil conservation, especially in agriculture. Contour plowing is an established practice enabling sustainable agriculture on sloping land; it is the practice of plowing along lines of equal elevation instead of up and down a slope.
Terrain is militarily critical because it determines the ability of armed forces to take and hold areas, and move troops and material into and through areas. An understanding of terrain is basic to both defensive and offensive strategy.
Terrain is important in determining weather patterns. Two areas geographically close to each other may differ radically in precipitation levels or timing because of elevation differences or a "rain shadow" effect.
Precise knowledge of terrain is vital in aviation, especially for low-flying routes and maneuvers (see terrain collision avoidance) and airport altitudes. Terrain will also affect range and performance of radars and terrestrial radio navigation systems. Furthermore, a hilly or mountainous terrain may strongly impact the implementation of a new aerodrome and the orientation of its runways.

Relief

Relief (or local relief) refers specifically to the quantitative measurement of vertical elevation change in a landscape. It is the difference between maximum and minimum elevations within a given area, usually of limited extent.^[1] The relief of a landscape can change with the size of the area over which it is measured, making the definition of the scale over which it is measured very important. Because it is related to the slope of surfaces within the area of interest and to the gradient of any streams present, the relief of a landscape is a useful metric in the study of the Earth's surface.

Geomorphology

Geomorphology is in large part the study of the formation of terrain or topography. Terrain is formed by intersecting processes:

Geological processes: migration of tectonic plates, faulting and folding, volcanic eruptions, rivers.
Erosional processes: water and wind erosion, landslides.
Extraterrestrial: meteorite impacts.

Tectonic processes such as orogenies cause land to be elevated, and erosional or weathering processes cause land to be worn away to lower elevations.

Land surface parameters are quantitative measures of various morphometric properties of a surface. The most common examples are used to derive slope or aspect of a terrain or curvatures at each location. These measures can also be used to derive hydrological parameters that reflect flow/erosion processes. Climatic parameters are based on the modelling of solar radiation or air flow.

Land surface objects, or landforms, are definite physical objects (lines, points, areas) that differ from the surrounding objects. The most typical examples arelines of watersheds, stream patterns, ridges, break-lines, pools or borders of specific landforms.

External links

The dictionary definition of terrain at Wiktionary

References

^ Summerfield, M.A., 1991, Global Geomorphology, Pearson, 537 p. ISBN 9780582301566

[1] Summerfield, M.A., 1991, Global Geomorphology, Pearson, 537 p. ISBN 9780582301566

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