Digital Topographic Landscape of Colorado
Karl Mueller (UCB)

Constructed in Natural Scene Designer
Mountains are uplifted, rivers and glaciers cut inexorably downward, myriad landscapes form over eons of geologic time. This image depicts the topography of Colorado from a perspective high in space, where colors and shading are used to highlight and illuminate mountain ranges, river networks, volcanic centers and sedimentary basins. Created as part of my continuing efforts to use the geology of Colorado as a laboratory for research and teaching, and as outreach to develop earth science middle school curriculum, this map uses digital topographic data to define relationships between such processes as active earthquake faulting and erosion, plastic flow of buried rocks and surface deformation. Constructed with digital elevation data, this image would have been impossible to create only five years ago. Equally important is the remarkable beauty of these maps, where Earth is Art and landscapes form in response to physical laws that are governed by gravity, heat transfer and climate.