Analysis of Spatial Structure and Dynamics of Tom Valley Landscapes based on GIS, Digital Elevation Model and Remote Sensing

Abstract

The Tom river valley is characterized by the composite landscape structure, which is conditioned by its location in a zone of transition from Altay Mountain Region to the Western-Siberian Platform. The landscape systems of the valley have high speed of the natural transformations. Besides a lot of landscape systems have undergone serious anthropogenic modification during XX- XXI centuries. The Purpose of this work is the analysis of the spatial structure of Tom valley landscapes and their natural and anthropogenic changes from the end of XIX century. The Object of research is the Tom river valley within the limits of Tomsk Region. The Subject of research is the internal-valley differentiation of landscape systems, their modern state, natural dynamics and anthropogenic modification for last 100 years. There are used both the traditional methods of the research in physical geography (including the field expedition methods) and the newest methods of GIS-mapping and complex spatial analysis based on remote sensing data and digital elevation models. In the research there is used software: ArcGIS 10 (ESRI Inc.), ERDAS Imagine (ERDAS Inc.). The results are next: big geodatabase and GIS “Tom river valley” (including the set of digital landscape and other thematic maps with the scale 1:10 000 – 1:25 000), digital elevation model (DEM) of valley in TIN and GRID formats, morphometric indexes of landscape systems (based on DEM), main trends of landscape dynamics in the different parts of the valley.