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The Future is Now: OpenTERRAworks - Interoperable 2D/3D Landscape Design Software for Integrated Environmental Modeling
Citation:
Babendreier, J., M. Lowry, A. Parks, S. Guthrie, AND S. Beaulieu. The Future is Now: OpenTERRAworks - Interoperable 2D/3D Landscape Design Software for Integrated Environmental Modeling. Presented at 2014 Annual Public Meeting of the Interagency Steering Committee on Multimedia Environmental Modeling (ISCMEM), Washington, DC, February 25 - 26, 2014.
Impact/Purpose:
Presented at the 2014 Annual Public Meeting of the Interagency Steering Committee on Multimedia Environmental Modeling (ISCMEM)
Description:
Human activities involving significant terrain alteration (e.g., earthworks operations associated with mines, urban development, landslides) can lead to broad-ranging changes in the surrounding terrestrial and aquatic environments. Potential aesthetic impacts can be associated with modified relief, soils, and/or change in land cover. Additionally, changes can be seen in spatiotemporal rates of surface runoff and erosion; rerouted flow paths; impacts to water quantity and quality; and species and ecosystem composition. Due to a lack of open "GIS" design tools, most assessors are basically "waiting for the future to predict it". Given opportunity, assessors would rather create the detailed landscape views needed to model it today. In design and in decision-making, the problem is that the FUTURE IS NOW. A multi-scale Geographical Information System (GIS) toolset to expand the technical capacity of communities and the USEPA to predict hillslope- to watershed-scale effects of proposed, alternative, and legacy landscape designs involving significant terrain modification.