Producing a subdivision of the landscape into landform units is seen as one of the critical inputs into the LMU classification process. As such LANDFORM, a customized GIS application for semi-automated landform classification was developed based on a key Australian classification of landforms by Speight (1990).  This approach provides a method for the division of landscape into identifiable sections known as landform elements which are useful for land mapping at scales ranging from 1:5,000 to 1:10,000. The landform elements fall into morphological types from which the following were used in this project.

Examples of a profile across terrain divided into morphological types of landform elements (adopted from Speight 1990).

A set of user-friendly custom commands for GeoMedia Professional was implemented with Visual basic using the objects of GeoMedia Grid for an easy step-by-step generation of topographic attributes for the classification of landform elements. These attributes defined the input for the classification of the primary landform elements, namely crest, depressions, flats and simple slopes. After an overlay of the single landform layers to one landform map, the simple slope areas were further divided into upper, mid and lower slope elements.

The project was carried out in Australia at the Muresk Institute of Agriculture Farm, situated 100 km northeast of Perth in the Shire of Northam in the Western Australian wheat belt. Muresk farm covers an area of 1720ha used for cropping, sheep farming and cattle production (CPSTOF Team 2004). The elevation of the flat to slightly rolling terrain with a mean slope of 5% ranges from about 154m to 274m above sea level.

Overview of commands for the landform classification (Klingseisen, 2004)

Each Custom Command allows the user to either select the default values or enter values more appropriate for their area of study. The following is an example of the Final Classifier command.

Final Classifier command

The following image displays the Landform elements generated across the Muresk Farm.

Final Landform Classification at Muresk Farm

Footnote: The “Collaborative Planning Support Tools for Optimised Farming”  http://www.cage.curtin.edu.au/~graciela/projects/cpstof/ is a project funded by the Australian Research Council and the Department of Agriculture Western Australia. A/Professor Graciela Metternicht ( This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it ) and Professor Murray McGregor ( This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it ) are the chief investigators of this project.

References:

CPSTOF Team (2004) Collaborative Planning Support Tools for Optimising Farming Systems, [online]

Klingseisen, B. (2004). GIS based generation of topographic attributes for landform classification. Diploma thesis, University of applied Sciences, School of Geoinformation, Villach, Austria, 122 pages.

Speight, J.G. (1990) Landform, in: Australian Soil and Land Survey-Field Handbook, (2nd edn), McDonald, R. C., Isbell, R. F., Speight, J. R., Walker, J. & Hopkins, M. S. (eds.), Inkata Press, Melbourne, Australia, pp. 9-57.

About the Authors

Ms Georgina Warren is a PhD Researcher at the Department of Spatial Sciences, Curtin University of Technology. Mr Bernhard Klingseisen is a GIS Student at the School of Geoinformation, Carinthia Tech Institute - University of Applied Sciences, Villach, Carinthia, Austria. More information about their research can be found online at the CPSTOF Project website.

Most recently, their submission titled "Customisation of GeoMedia Grid for Landform Classification" was a winner in the Geospatial World 2004, Awards Program – Intergraph Poster Competition, Miami Beach, Florida, USA, 12-14 May.