Topography

Not to be confused with topology, typography, or tomography.
This article is about the study of Earth's surface shape and features. For discussion of land surfaces themselves, see Terrain. For other uses, see Topography (disambiguation).
A topographic map of Stowe, Vermont with contour lines
This false-color satellite image illustrates topography of the urban core of the New York metropolitan area, with Manhattan at its center.

Topography is the study of the forms and features of land surfaces. The topography of an area may refer to the land forms and features themselves, or a description or depiction in maps.

Topography is a field of geoscience and planetary science and is concerned with local detail in general, including not only relief, but also natural, artificial, and cultural features such as roads, land boundaries, and buildings.[1] In the United States, topography often means specifically relief, even though the USGS topographic maps record not just elevation contours, but also roads, populated places, structures, land boundaries, and so on.[2]

Topography in a narrow sense involves the recording of relief or terrain, the three-dimensional quality of the surface, and the identification of specific landforms; this is also known as geomorphometry. In modern usage, this involves generation of elevation data in digital form (DEM). It is often considered to include the graphic representation of the landform on a map by a variety of cartographic relief depiction techniques, including contour lines, hypsometric tints, and relief shading.

  1. ^ West, Terry R.; Shakoor, Abdul (2018-03-19). Geology Applied to Engineering (2nd ed.). Waveland Press. pp. 545. ISBN 978-1-4786-3722-6.
  2. ^ "US Topo—Topographic Maps for the Nation" (PDF). United States Geological Survey. October 2013.