What is Digital Terrain Analysis?
Relief, a vertical measurement, may be portrayed on a two-dimensional map in several ways. Terrain analysis involves the symbolization and representation of a landscape. Familiar topographic products include: • Hill Shaded Maps • Raised Relief Maps • Contour Maps, etc. Maps depicting topography have been produced throughout cartographic history, but it is only recently that point elevations have been collected in precise digital form. At the heart of terrain analysis is the raw elevation data, which may have been collected in a variety of ways. In the past all topographic data was collected by surveyors using instruments such as the level, transit and theodolite (click here for further links to land surveying information from the Huntinton Technology Group.). Today, the same data may be collected by survey teams, but now using GPS (Global Positioning System) receivers. There are currently many excellent reference sources on GPS applications on the Internet.
