Geomorphometry 2009 will be held at the University of Zurich, in period 29 August - 2 September 2009. The conference aims to attract leading researchers in geomorphometry presenting methodological advances in the field and to provide young researchers with an opportunity to present new results. The abstract submission has now closed. We have received cca. 50 abstracts that will be reviewed by the members of the scientific committee (EasyChair system). A number of abstracts will be invited for an oral presentation. After the conference, all contributing authors will be invited to submit their articles for a publication in the special issue Hydrology and Earth System Sciences Journal. A detailed programme of the conference is under preparation. Early registrations are now open. Please consider also registering for one of the three parallel two-day workshops...read more

Geomorphometry is the science of quantitative land-surface analysis. It draws upon mathematical, statistical, and image-processing techniques to quantify the shape of earth's topography at various spatial scales. The focus of geomorphometry is calculation of surface-form measures (land-surface parameters) and features (objects), which may be used to improve the mapping and modelling of landforms, soils, vegetation, land use, natural hazards, and other information. With today's rapid growth in sources for mass-produced surface heights (digital elevation models, or DEMs), such as the Shuttle Radar Topographic Mission and laser ranging (LiDAR) technology, geomorphometric methods are becoming increasingly attractive to many disciplines. The operational focus of geomorphometry is the extraction of land-surface parameters and objects from digital elevation models (DEMs). In the most simple terms, geomorphometry is everything you can extract from DEMs! ...read more

Interested in generating DEMs and running various analyses on DEMs using open source software? You should try the R + SAGA/ILWIS + Google Earth combination. R is the open source version of the S language for statistical computing, SAGA and ILWIS are open-source GIS packages with extensive spatial analysis capabilities and with many built-in DEM analysis functions (both can be controlled from R). Google Earth is the powerful browser for geographical data ...read more