Model-based visualization of future forest landscapes

Abstract

Forest landscapes are the type of landscape that British Columbians would call "home". One of the biggest challenges for future sustainable forest management is climate change: Impacts as well as human mitigation and adaptation actions will have considerable impacts on BC's landscapes. In order to help decision-makers proactively assessing mitigation and adaptation options and their landscape impact, the scenario method is particularly powerful because it allows decision-makers to consider alternative options. However, such scenarios are often abstract and do not allow any assessment of the visual qualities of future landscapes. Visual assessment requires computer visualizations based on geodata and forest models and capable of visualizing vegetation cover with a high numbers of 3D tree models in a level of realism sufficient for visual landscape assessment (Lange 2001; Pettit 2010). Therefore, the poster submission is part of the growing field of landscape visualization established by Zube et al. (1987), Bishop 2001, Ervin (2001), Lange (2001), Sheppard (2001), Appleton and Lovett (2003), Bishop and Lange (2005), and Paar and Clasen (2007). © 2011 ACM.