Accession Number:

AD0202198

Title:

Procedures in the Descriptive Analysis of Terrain

Descriptive Note:

[Technical Report, Final Report]

Corporate Author:

WISCONSIN UNIV MADISON

Personal Author(s):

• Hammond, Edwin H.

Report Date:

1958-07-01

Pagination or Media Count:

166

Abstract:

The project on Procedures in the Descriptive Analysis of Terrain originally grew out of the principal investigators efforts to find, primarily for teaching purposes, an approach to land form study that would be of maximum use to geographers and to other students who are interested in the use of the land. One obvious need appeared to be a method for systematically characterizing the land form in terms of its inherent nature. While many individual steps had been taken in the direction, and while in some countries, most notably Germany, a relatively broad advance had neem made, there did not appear to be available an integrated study or presentation of the principles or methods of objective descriptive analysis, especially for use at medium and small scales. It was with the hope of partially filling this gap that the present investigation was conceived and proposed to the office of Naval Research in 1953. Clearly such an investigation could not presume to be wholly, or even largely, original in specific context. There is little that is new in the general principles of geographical description. The literature of land form characterization in extensive, and has grown significantly more so in the last few years. It is, therefore, inevitable that much that appears in this resulting report will be somewhat familiar. Taken as a whole, however, the endeavor does not appear to duplicate what has been done before. Such originality as it posses must be found somewhere within 1 its attempt to apply to the description of land form as body of principle consistent with geographical description generally, 2 its preoccupation with methods applicable to the fairly rapid analysis of large areas, and 3 its efforts to bring together under a single cover an essentially integrated system of description applicable to all kinds and aspects of terrain.

Descriptors:

Subject Categories:

• Geography
• Cartography and Aerial Photography

Distribution Statement:

[A, Approved For Public Release]