Developing platform of 3-D visualization of forest landscape

The recording and simulation data of forest landscapes are massive, high-dimensional, and abstract, requiring intuitive representation. 3-D visualization is an efficient tool to comprehend possible landscape changes generated by real-world or forest landscape models. Based on current advantages of game engines (realism and convenience), we developed a platform for 3-D visualization of forest landscapes (FLV). FLV streamlines multiple software and programming languages to break barrier between geographic data and game engine and transforms outputs of forest landscape models into visualization parameters. Compared with previous 3-D visualizations, FLV has better realism, efficiency, and navigation. We used simulation data of post-volcanic eruption forest landscape recovery in Changbai Mountain as a case study and demonstrated functionalities of FLV. FLV can visualize seamlessly from individual tree to forest stand and landscape scales, and from individual year to de-cades and centuries temporal scales. It offers potential solutions for the digital representation of complex environmental change.

Automated summary

3D visualization is an efficient tool for understanding forest landscape changes, and the FLV platform has advantages in terms of realism, efficiency, and navigation, providing potential solutions for the digital representation of complex environmental change.