Gis–base method of landscape visualization: a tool for environmental management

The world is facing more severe and devastating environmental threats than have previously been experienced. The threats include erosion, land degradation, deforestation, climate variability and change, which could cause irreversible damage to terrestrial and marine ecosystem with consequent loss of production potential. Landscape visualization, is a visual simulation or landscape modeling, representing actual places and on-the ground conditions in 3-Dimensional perspective viewed often with fairly high realism. These specific forms of virtual reality are computer generated in three or four dimensions, and can convey detailed information on the assumed future appearance of environments; sky, terrain, buildings, and vegetation amounting to a unique form of visual communication, conveying information in the dominant form to which the human species is genetically adapted (i.e. visual landscapes), and also capable of showing future worlds as they would be seen if the viewer were actually there. Recently, GIS-based methods for landscape visualization are applied more broadly to depict alternative future scenarios for visioning, public input, and decision-making using Geographic Information System and remote sensing imagery with other information to communicate climate change scenarios which will help demonstrate consequences of environmental change in a compelling manner that will motivate personal action and enhance visions of the future and potential interventions in policy. This paper therefore aimed to review geographic information science (GIS) based landscape visualisation as a tool for environmental management towards behavioral change with respect to the climate.