Visualization of alternative future scenarios for forest ecosystems using animated statistical surfaces

Rising uncertainties associated with climate change make it important to include forest ecosystem simulations into forest management planning. The output of such models can be visualized in two-dimensional time-series animation, which is often too complex to provide a spatio-temporal overview. This contribution describes a novel method, called animated three-dimensional statistical surfaces, that aims at improving the perception of change in animated time-series. The method visualizes attribute values as surfaces, which are interpolated and animated over time; the attribute surfaces are combined with color-coding and contour lines to support absolute and relative height judgment as well as faster perception and better location of change. A design study and prototypical implementation of the visualization method is described in this contribution. The method is not limited to ecological model output; it can be used to create three-dimensional animations of arbitrary time-series where parameters are supplied in regular raster format.