DL-TerrainDiversity

Import

Terrain

Drop a terrain the patch being designed — analysis, editing and species run on this

single-band float32 DEM, any CRS · or click to choose a file

Orthophoto

Drop an orthophoto uncompressed RGB GeoTIFF, EPSG:25833 · draped by its own georeferencing

Licensed for teaching and research only. The drape is held in memory for this session, is never written into any export — not the figures, not the layer rasters, not Everything · ZIP — and is discarded when the tab closes. It is a photograph of what was there, not a reading of the design: no measurement on screen changes when it is switched on.

Site photographs

Drop site visit photographs geotagged JPEGs · placed where the camera stood, aimed the way it looked

Substrate

Drop a substrate GeoTIFF class codes, any integer or float type

Codes mean

Select

By drawing

click place a vertex · double-click or first vertex close the ring
Esc cancel · Backspace undo a vertex · Delete remove the selection
drag pan · wheel zoom — a plan is a sheet, so it does not orbit

From a file

Select the .shp, and the .prj with it if you have one — nothing is reprojected, so a mismatched CRS is named rather than silently assumed. One feature becomes one region, holes included. DXF is not read yet; see the note in the design document.

By attribute

Layer

At least — At most —

A selection is where the modifiers are allowed to act; an attribute is one way of building one. It reads the CURRENT surface, so re-applying it after an edit selects different cells — "where it is steep" means where it is steep now. Cells with no answer (wetness on level ground, aspect on a flat cell) are excluded, never counted as zero.

Modify

Brush

Level to datum (planarize) Brush radius 2.0 m Strength 0.15 m

Terrace

Vertical interval 1.0 m Tread share of interval 70% Volume policy

Benches the whole tile twice at each target tread — once with one interval and one datum, once patch by landform patch on each patch's own slope and floor — with the uniform interval searched so both schemes move the same volume. Reads the surface as it stands and changes nothing.

Curve

1. Press Curve above — the view locks to plan, because a line traced in a tilted view lands somewhere other than where it looked.
2. Click along the ground to place points. Two make a line, more give it bends. There is nothing to finish — the line is whatever you have clicked so far, and it keeps extending until you cut it.
3. Choose a cross-section, and what the line does with height — level holds water, grade moves it, follow keeps a constant depth below the ground.
4. The sentence below prices it before anything moves. Cut the curve commits it; Ctrl+Z takes it back, and clear the line throws the line away without cutting.

The edge condition uses the same two batter angles as plan levelling — a cutting stands at its own stability, an embankment ravels to its repose angle. A graded channel conveys water; this tool states the gradient and the volume, never a speed.

Pattern

Module 8.0 m

no pattern

cut 0% 100% fill

Amplitude ±0.100 m Invert — white cuts, black fills

The stamp bills the same ledger as the brushes. It is volume-neutral only when the pattern averages out over the ground it covers — a symmetric drawing very nearly is, a hand-drawn one is not, and the net figure says which. With a region selected in Plan mode the pattern is confined to it.

Net earth moved±0.0 m³

cut 0.0 m³ · fill 0.0 m³

Ctrl+Z undo · Ctrl+Shift+Z or Ctrl+Y redo — strokes, stamps, levelling, substrate paint and the reset itself

Read

Elevation

Slope

Aspect

TWI · wetness

Catchment area

Cut / fill

Closed depressions

Ruggedness

Sky view factor

Openness

Solar · Apr–Sep

Wind exposure · SW

Landforms

Watersheds

Species assemblage

Substrate

Hillshade · form only

Click a map to paint it on the terrain · click it again for plain relief · hillshade is form alone, no layer read onto it

Solar period 1 Apr – 30 Sep

Proportional symbols

Rainfall

Species

A habitat-suitability instrument, not a prediction. Each species has a tolerance range per axis — moisture, energy, substrate, shelter, landform — combined so that the worst axis governs. The envelopes are stated assumptions, open to argument; nothing here is fitted to occurrence data and no uncertainty is carried. It answers whether a gesture widens or narrows the range of conditions on the site, not which plant will grow.

Section

Measured

Relief—

Slope mean—

Ruggedness (TRI)—

Geodiversity—

Landform diversity—

Watersheds—

Largest catchment—

Water storage—

Hollows—

TWI defined—

Shannon H′—

Habitats present—

Invasive cover—

Display

Surface

Voxels

Block size is set here while Voxels is the representation above. A block is a whole number of DEM cells, so the terrain is read as volume rather than as a skin — which is what the printable solid and the cut/fill blocks are built from.

Attribute glyphs

One glyph per 4 cells Length 90% of the spacing

Drop a context the coarse tile it sits inside — a backdrop, never edited

single-band float32 DEM, any CRS · or click to choose a file

left-drag paint · middle-drag orbit · right-drag pan
alt-drag orbit · shift-drag pan · wheel zoom to cursor
double-click centre here · R reset view

Export

Bake vertical exaggeration into the mesh

Shapefile (.shp/.shx/.dbf/.prj, EPSG:25833) and GeoJSON of the same rings, zipped. Attributes: id, name, level_m — the datum each region was told to reach, which makes the set a specification rather than a tracing.

The section SVG is vector at a stated scale, existing ground dashed and proposed solid, cut and fill hatched in opposite directions so they survive greyscale. Areas are m² on the section, not volumes: the ledger is the only place a volume comes from.

Isopach: equal depth of cut (dashed) and fill (solid), the limit of works heavy. Slope classes: gradient bands as ratios, denser hatch is steeper. Drainage: channels, divides, standing water and ranked outfalls at a stated event. Chainage sections: cross-sections at even stations along the guide, looking along it, areas per section.

GeoTIFF keeps EPSG:25833 · OBJ is local, Z-up, true elevations · the figure carries its legend and units · Everything bundles the terrain, every layer's values and every figure, with a README

Digital Landscapes