A key component of NetMap is a software platform we refer to as a “Digital Landscape”. The digital landscape provides a computer implementation of our conceptual models of how landscape processes interact over space and time. It provides a convenient way to look at linkages and interactions between disparate data and disparate processes.
Integral to the digital landscape is a synthetic channel network. This is a network derived from flow directions inferred from digital elevation data. Within the digital landscape, every point is explicitly linked to the channel network via surface flow paths. In the digital landscape, the synthetic channel network provides the spatial framework for linking different processes.