History of Cartographic
Landscape
Representation
Graphic representations

Where is the observer? Here are the 2 most typical mapping
situations:

Above the surface with no perspective foreshortening
 Often
 Useful

referred to as being ‘planimetrically-correct’
for maintaining constant horizontal map scale
Anywhere else, usually with perspective foreshortening
 Lines
parallel to 1 or more world coordinate axes are
shown as converging in the rendered illustration
 Map
scale changes continuously with distance from the
viewpoint
Perspective geometry
A cube in the 3D world is
rendered in perspective
Adobe Illustrator
provides a tool to
enable easy 3D
perspective drawing
Lines parallel to 3D axes of our choosing converge
at selectable ‘vanishing points’ on the horizon
3D rendering without perspective
A box with and without perspective
geometry
Planimetrically-correct landscapes

Maintain constant horizontal scale to the limits of map
projection
 Hachures
 Give
very good impression of slope and aspect
 Absolute
 Shaded
 Like
elevations must be supplied by other means
relief
hachures, but using an airbrush technique
 Contours
 Excellent
 Slope
 Not
portrayal of absolute elevations
and aspect discoverable by analysis of contours
as intuitive for users as hachures or shaded relief
Hachures
Hachures are lines that show
paths of steepest descent
The image is a clip from a
sample Dufour map provided
for download by the Swiss
Federal Office of Topography
Guillaume-Henri Dufour was
head of the Swiss
Topographical Bureau in the
mid 19th century
Contours
On a map like this, ridges, slope
breaks, peaks, course lines and
other features pop out
But most observers find it difficult
to imagine the view of the scene
from a particular point of view
Image from
http://street.umn.edu/Road/javahel
p/HTML/Import_contour_map.htm
Shaded relief
Shaded relief maps are illuminated
surfaces
Brightness values correspond to the
slope and aspect of a surface patch
The light source for the scene is
usually placed at a constant
location for all points in the scene
But not always…
Perspective representations

A sample of formats:
 Landscape
 Block
paintings
diagrams (Rudy Slingerland, Lobeck, Raisz)
 Lithography
(Imhof, etc)
Other factors in landscape rendering
Landscape images can serve many purposes
 They can support scientific inquiry directly or indirectly
 Photo-realistic styling
 Essentially a photographic, more or less objective view
 Non-photorealistic styling

 Somewhat
more subjective interpretation
 ‘Painterly’ style
 Pen and ink style
Landscape paintings
Thomas Cole, “The Oxbow”
 (1836, from Wikipedia)
 Follows rules of perspective
geometry
 Many other landscape
elements (other than
surface features) are
included
 Possible vertical
exaggeration
 For us, a ‘painterly’ example

Perspective Landscape Rendering

Demonstrated in Tuscan
landscape paintings by
da Vinci

Extended to
woodcuts in
the 16th
century by
Murer and
others
Study of a Tuscan
SectionLandscape,
of Map of Zurich,
Da Vinci,
Murer,
ca. 1473
1566
Modern pen and ink landscape
illustrations

William Henry Holmes, “Mesa Verde”
 (1895,
from David Rumsey map
collection)

Intended to show surface
processes

Simplicity of linework lends itself
to interpretation of surface
Block diagrams
Lobeck, Block Diagrams,
1958
Large scale, perspective view of surface and
substructure
Lithography
Image from
Cartographic
Relief
Presentation, p.
255
Numeric representations

Digital elevation models (DEMs)

Vector (TIN)

Raster (grid cell)
Geometry and
landscapes


What are we trying to do?

Realistic or abstract impression?

Navigation? Surface analysis?
What models do we need?

Planimetrically-correct?

Perspective?

Other? Picasso perspective?

Modern GPUs can do all this
and more
Picasso, La Rue des Bois or Paris, August or September
1908,
https://www.moma.org/collection/works/80660?locale=en
Photorealistic representations

Standard shaded relief
presentation with draped
photography

Can we do better than
this?

We should at least try!!
Non-photorealistic representations
(NPR)

Line drawings can show
surface trends

What other kinds
of things can we do?

If you can imagine it,
you can draw it