Study On Relief Shading In Mapping

Relief is a fundamental element in the natural environment, and it is the generic term for variety of undulating shape. How to present such undulating shape in the plane map is one of the most challenging problems in cartography. Over a long period of research and practice, cartographers proposed some methods to represent the relief, including pictorial relief map, hachuring, isoline method, hypsometric tint, and relief shading. Relief shading has become one of the main methods to represent the terrain, because it has several advantages such as natural, intuitive and aesthetic, etc.This paper discusses the research history and the status of relief shading, introduces the related theories and models, and the illumination model and color model are included. The paper also gives detail about the digital elevation model, which is the basic data for relief shading. Details to SRTM are given too.Based on the previous study, this paper has effort on the technology of digital relief shading making. This paper analyses the effect to relief shading, and the map based on different parameters are given. The realization of relief shading in different software (such as GIS software, graphic software and so on) is discussed. The suggestions on how to improve the relief looking and what to be all attention when making color relief shading and with other features in the shading map are also given. And the examples based on different analyses are given.At last, the author gives the conclusion of this paper, points out the problems now exist, and gives suggestions on the relief shading map making studying.