Future directions and challenges for quantitative environmental visualization

Environmental visualization involves putting environmental information into visual forms and includes extracting data from environmental images. Environmental visualization uses visual images (photographs), as well as mathematical images (formulae) and physical/non-visual images (measured and modeled data) to visually represent environmental objects or phenomena on local, regional and global scales. This paper discusses several approaches to visualization to emphasize that environmental visualization has the potential to go beyond the 'pretty pictures' produced by digitized photographs or by the visual display of data.