Many neural regions are arranged into two-dimensional topographic maps, such as the retinotopic maps in mammalian visual cortex. Computational simulations have led to valuable insights about how cortical topography develops and functions, but further progress has been hindered by the lack of appropriate tools. It has been particularly difficult to bridge across levels of detail, because simulat...

Abstract Information about catchment-scale groundwater dynamics is necessary to understand how catchments store and release water and why water quantity and quality varies in streams. However, groundwater level monitoring is often restricted to a limited number of sites. Knowledge of the factors that determine similarity between monitoring sites can be used to predict catchment-scale groundwate...

The future evolution of the Antarctic Ice Sheet represents the largest uncertainty in sea-level projections of this and upcoming centuries. Recently, satellite observations and high-resolution simulations have suggested the initiation of an ice-sheet instability in the Amundsen Sea sector of West Antarctica, caused by the last decades' enhanced basal ice-shelf melting. Whether this localized de...

Updating of navigation databases is an important task to ensure a high level utilization of navigation data. For example, in fundamental topographic databases roads are often represented as a single line without detailed connectivity and traffic flow information, but for a navigation database, roads separated by physical barriers should be represented as two roads with different traffic flow di...

Topographic eminence is a basic level category representing all convex shaped topographic landforms rising above their immediate surroundings. As opposed to everyday objects, the properties of an eminence are dependent on how it is conceptualized and where it is delineated. Research has shown that there are multiple conceptualizations of eminences (and other landforms) depending on cultural and...

This paper presents a method for the extraction of high level compound forest cover information from manually produced scanned historical topographic maps. The contained forest cover is a unique data source for GIS-based land cover change modelling. As a case study, this work focuses on the so-called Siegfried Map, the Swiss national topographic map series of the 19 century. The map is of low g...

We examine the validity of two methods for estimating glacier equilibrium-line altitudes (ELAs) from topographic maps. The ELA determined by contour inflection (the kinematic ELA) and the mean elevation of the glacier correlate extremely well with the ELA determined from mass-balance data (observed ELA). However, the range in glacier elevations above sea level is much larger than the variation ...

A digital elevation model (DEM) of a watershed can be used to acquire various parameters such as basin-wide information about overland flow direction, flow accumulation and area contributing flow to any point. The resolution and quality of a DEM are important to achieve a significant level of accuracy in derived parameters. Inadequate elevation information exacerbated by applied interpolation m...