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Yellowstone
Stand Level Visualization
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Projects
designed to display the structure of a functional unit of land
cover are termed stand level visualizations. The next stage
of visualization used in the Yellowstone effort was actually
a mixed-scale approach, using vegetation objects to visualize
forest structure between a landscape and stand level of detail.
The visualizations highlight landscape characteristics such
as the spatial arrangement of stand types, stand structure and
land cover change. The focus of the landscape/stand level visualizations
was on three successional stages of the lodgepole pine forest:
post-fire seedling regeneration; young successional forest,
with a dense, even-age canopy; and the mature forest |
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VNS represents trees, snags, deadfall, ground cover and other vegetation
types using image objects taken from the real world. Objects are either
placed individually on the landscape or grouped together in associations
called "ecotypes." Each ecotype consists of groups of image
objects, each with their own height range and density specifications.
At the landscape/stand level, where only general land cover classes
are known, GIS polygon coverages were used to drive the placement
of ecotypes upon the landscape. |
Landscape metrics and spatial analysis are becoming widely used
in many aspects of ecological assessment and resource management.
By quantifying the landscape before and after the 1988 fire
using various landscape metrics, comparisons can be made between
the temporal representations of the |
| landscape.
Text-based summary tables can quantify differences in
metrics representing change in the forested landscape,
but indicating the specific location or nature of the
change is often difficult. Visualizations support landscape
metrics analysis by making information more accessible
to forest managers, ecologists and the public. The image
above provides a comparison between the traditional method
for representing landcover change and more realistic geovisualizations.
While the stills show a snapshot of a stand level view,
animations created for this project further acquaint the
viewer with the landscape structure by means of motion
simulating flight and ground based movements. |
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(Click image to view animation) |
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