gewasreliëf

Gewasreliëf is a cartographic concept describing the portrayal of terrain relief through vegetation patterns on maps. The Dutch term combines gewas (vegetation or crops) with reliëf (relief). In practice, gewasreliëf refers to relief cues created by the arrangement and texture of fields, orchards, hedgerows and woodlands that align with the underlying topography.

Gewasreliëf can complement traditional relief representations such as contour lines or shaded relief by using vegetation texture to suggest slope and elevation changes. Techniques include integrating land-cover data with elevation models, and rendering patterns that resemble furrows, tree belts, or grouped crops to evoke microtopography.

Historically, some topographic and agricultural maps employed gewasreliëf to convey landscape structure in rural areas where vegetation strongly reflects terrain. In modern maps, the approach may be used for visual storytelling in landscape ecology, agrarian planning, or historical map reproduction when vegetation history is important.

Its advantages include providing a familiar, landscape-relevant cue for readers and highlighting land-use relationships with relief. Limitations include sensitivity to seasonal changes, crop rotation, and dense forest, where vegetation patterns obscure or exaggerate true elevation features, and the need for current land-cover data.

See also: relief shading, hill shading, texture shading, hypsometric tinting, land-cover mapping.