Principles of semantic modeling of landform structures

Landforms, which result from the interplay of physical, chemical, and biolo gical processes acting on the surface, function as static boundary conditio ns for processes in geomorphology, hydrology, meteorology and other fields. The description, parameterization, and modeling of landform structure, as well as the terminology used, are fitted to the requirements of the discipl ines and are, therefore, often strongly divergent. As a consequence, repres entations of landform structure for different disciplines are often not com patible and require frequent revisions and adaptations. Principles of the s emantic approach to the problem are presented in this paper. The main objec tive is a semantically correct description of landform which is useful to a ll disciplines related to surface structure. The approach considers geometr ic form as a basic property, extended by topological considerations and sem antic definitions. The potential, limitations, and open questions of the se mantic-based approach are discussed using hillslopes as a case study. The f ocus of the paper is on semantic representation and only thereafter are the special features of DEMs, teals, and implementations considered. (C) 2001 Published by Elsevier Science Ltd.