How to operationalize Paradigms?

Actually if we take an straightforward example for using GIS software, a very nice and apparently simple one is the idea that one is able to calculate a representation of the worlds surface. This means more ore less a to get an idea of the altitude of a lot of points.

What is a Landscape and how to measure it?

There is an outstanding discussion in the field of geography and neighboring disciplines about the cognitive, aesthetic, morphological and morphometric aspects of relief shapes. This is even more valid for terms as summits, notches, saddles and so on.

Let’s have just for an example a look at the professional discussions about “morphometric structures” or to be more “geographic”, about What is a landform, a landscape, a peak, a summit a ridge…? (see for example Rasemann (2004)((Rasemann, S., (2004), Geomorphometrische Struktur eines mesoskaligen alpinen Geosystems, Asgard-Verlag, St. Augustin, Bonner Geographische Abhandlungen, Heft Nr. 111, URL: Rasemann (German only).

So nobody should doubt that major effort were made to derive this kind of informations from spatial datasets as DEMs (e.g. Wood (1996) (( Wood, J.D., (1996), The geomorphological characterisation of digital elevation models. PhD Thesis, University of Leicester, UK, URL: Wood, or for a more sophisticated approach Schmidt & Hewitt (2004) ((Schmidt, J, & A. Hewitt, (2004). Fuzzy land element classification from DTMs based on geometry and terrain position. Geoderma 121.3, S.243-256. URL: Schmidt et al..