Yellowstone Plot Level Visualization


The most detailed stage of visualization is the plot level, which highlights unique structural characteristics of a specific forest plot. More precise changes in forest composition and structure are presented at this scale. The plot level visualization in this study demonstrates the ability of object-oriented feature extraction to describe the position and size of individual trees and other landscape components. In contrast to the use of GIS polygons at the stand level, exact locations for trees, snags and deadfall were known at the plot level. For these visualizations, GIS point coverages were used to place individual image objects, such as trees and standing dead snags of various heights upon the terrain.

Two 200m square study sites were selected for the plot level visualizations. The first site was located in a regenerating forest while the second was a mature forest. While a GIS provides the means to catalog and display the spatial position of point features representing trees in the plot, only someone intimately familiar with both the forest ecology and GIS symbology can comprehend what is physically on the ground. In contrast, the visualized representation of these plots clearly communicates the forest structure, including species/object type, location and size, in a simple yet powerful manner .

In an effort to improve upon the plot and stand level visualizations, the park was revisited in 2002 to collect image objects specific to Yellowstone and photographs documenting various land cover classes. These datasets allowed the refinement of the ecotypes developed for the various land cover types created to more exactly match the living and non-living vegetation objects specific to Yellowstone.

 



This figure illustrates how an Ecosystem in Visual Nature Studio can be refined with objects from the real world: (top) field photo, (middle) initial visualization using generic image objects and (bottom) final visualization using image objects acquired in Yellowsone.

Please contact the author (mdunbar@ku.edu) for permission prior to using any images or animations obtained from this site. Full resolution animations (720x480) are also available upon request.