Development of a New Approach for a Digital, Cartographic Rock and Relief Representation

Abstract

This paper presents a new approach to digital rock and relief representation. A prerequisite for the method was its applicability for different scales and thus different resolutions of the underlying terrain models. A further requirement was its suitability for different rock types. It must also take into account the rock surfaces that have become ice-free due to glacier retreat and be easy to integrate into the map in the event of an update. The relief representation follows the principle that the terrain should be reproduced as naturally as possible to provide the map user with the best possible orientation in the terrain. The approach requires a very good knowledge of the terrain as well as a certain artistic talent to achieve an appealing, natural color scheme. Through the process of color manipulation from the four-color set, it is also possible, in addition to the summer representation from the data collected with remote sensing methods, to generate winter representations for e.g. ski tourers. The use of established, automatic procedures considerably reduces the workload for the cartographer and also enables simple integration of corrections and changes to the landscape, e.g. due to glacial retreat and landslides, and can be applied to large map series due to its reproducibility.