Study of spatio-temporal process visualization for estuarine and coastal GIS

The spatio-temporal modeling and visualization of certainthree-dimensional (3D)dynamic marine phenomena in estuarine and coastal waters, such as whirlpools, frontal, water mass, arevery challenging for the MGIS development. Based on the flow modeling and visualization technology of AVIZO Green, we present a spatio-temporal three-scale dynamic recognition technique for visualizing the 3D marine phenomena. We designed a theme-oriented four dimensional GIS (4DGIS) application framework to describe visually the 3D marine phenomena in continuous marine scenario. Whirlpools, fresh water fronts, plumes and salty pycnoclines in Yangtze Estuary are taken as examples in the visualization that demonstrates the spatio-temporal evolution of object-like and field-like marine phenomena. It provides a new approach for simulation visualization of marine phenomena, as well as expression of more sophisticated, multi-dimensional and dynamic marine phenomena.