Bolstad Chapter 11 Terrain Analysis

Terrain analysis is important in GIS because terrain dictates how water flows and where it collects, how much sunlight hits a place throughout the day/year, and what can be seen from where in different landscapes. DEMs provide important information about terrain: hillshade, slope, and aspect can be derived from this type of data. It's also possible to determine flow through and watershed boundaries for hydrologic functions with a DEM. When working with this raster data we can use 3D analyst or spatial analyst extensions.