Advocate Harbour
Color Shaded
Relief Map

Cartography Portfolio: Advocate Harbour Color Shaded Relief Map

Color shaded relief (CSR) models help people easily identify terrain displacements using shadow effects relative to an artificial sun angle and altitude. This effect combined with a good color ramp provides subtle shadings that we naturally perceive as depth, helping the image to appear three dimensional.

Advocate Harbour Color Shaded Relief Map

Cooler (greens) colors help represent areas with lower relief while warmer (yellow and orange) help depicting areas with greater elevations.

Generating color shaded relief maps from elevation data is one of the early skills that I developed while studying remote sensing at the Centre of Geographic Sciences (COGS).

Over my career, I have probably generated hundreds of different CSR images, and now a new large 8 foot color shaded relief map that I have created for a non-profit group has been posted for display at a local tourist kiosk in Advocate Harbour, Nova Scotia.

The 5m resolution color shaded relief was created from elevation and topographic data made available from GeoGratis under the Open Government License using a combination of PCI geomatica and Adobe Illustrator software.

Download Canadian OpenData from over 100 different Sources

Both visitors and residents of the Advocate Harbour area will now be able to gain a better appreciation of the topography that borders the Northern Bay of Fundy region (such as the stunning views experienced along the various trails of Cape Chignecto Provincial Park …), as well as perhaps discover some new scenic places that they may have yet to discover.

Advocate Harbour - 2015 CSR 3D