Three dimensional visualization of forest landscapes with fire and other disturbances

3-D visualization has become an effective tool for measuring and depicting impacts of various disturbances, including management actions, and predicting responses of the forest to these disturbances.  A virtual forest landscape can be used to visualize different scenarios on a computer, which allows observation of forest landscapes without time limitations. 3D visualization facilitates discussions of management alternatives and promotes better understanding of natural and human disturbances among researchers, forest managers, and the public. Our objectives were to visualize forest landscapes at various scales, and to visualize different forest landscapes by placing individual trees into a forest landscape with realistic sizes and densities. The terrain, species composition, and tree sizes and densities from forest inventories were all represented in GIS data format. Disturbance effects were portrayed. The advantages of the visualization approach are that: a) it photo-realistically represents and animates the forest landscapes with life-like individual tree images; and b) it maintains both visual and informational realism in a forest that can be viewed from perspectives that range from the stand to landscape scales. The result is similar to a photograph that has informational content from actual forest composition, density and height data. We also identify the challenges of visualizations and discuss the limitations and advantages of visualization for basic and applied science in natural resource management.