Military Applied Geomorphological Mapping: Normandy Case Study

Peter L. Guth

Department of Oceanography

United States Naval Academy

572C Holloway Road

Annapolis, MD 24102

Geomorphological Layers (requires Google Earth or an equivalent viewer on your computer):

• Derived from  SRTM 3" (~ 90 m) 
  • Color tinted elevation (1.4 MB)
  • Slope map (1.4 MB)
  • Terrain organization (3.6 MB)
  • Ridges and valleys (using three different algorithms, 11 MB)
• Drainage network from Hydrosheds
• NGA Global shoreline
• Roads and obstacles from Landsat imagery (Band 4, Laplace of Gaussian filter) (2 MB)
• Roads and obstacles from Landsat imagery (Band 8, Laplace of Gaussian filter)

Historical layers

• 25 July 1944 Situation Map (7 MB)
• Front lines, 6 key dates
• Daily front lines

This analysis uses SRTM 3" (~ 90 m)  and Landsat ETM+ (30 m) data.  The positions of the World War II front lines are from 1:500,000 scale maps.  Zooming in too far in Google Earth can reveal the limitations of this scale of GIS data, and users should consider that.

This page supplements Guth, P.L., 2011, Military Applied Geomorphological Mapping: Normandy Case Study: in Smith, M., Paron, P., and Griffiths, J.S,. eds., Geomorphological Mapping: methods and applications, Developments in Earth Surface Processes, vol.15, ELSEVIER.

Additional Normandy layers, military history.

last revision 1/21/2016