Topological approaches to terrain in ecological landscape mapping

With contemporary emphasis on sustainability and ecosystem-oriented natural resources management, ecological mapping at landscape scales is becoming increasingly important as a framework for environmental planning, monitoring and assessment. This is especially so when the terrain has substantial variability in elevation and steep slopes. Recognizing the importance of hydrology in landscape dynamics, we base an ecological mapping approach on topological features of terrain from a hydrologic and habitat perspective. This approach emphasizes convexities and concavities of topography as caplands and confluent cuplands, respectively. A concept of coherent convex contours provides an operational basis for determining capland components, with cupland components being predominantly concave contributing areas for higher-order streams. Scaling sequences of subdivisions give progressive partitioning down to sizes of units that serve practical purposes of natural resource management. An innovation of dome domains and terrain tiers is introduced for more detailed topological treatment of land forms