HYPSOMETRY

Abstract

One approach to analyzing hypsometry is to produce a histogram of the frequency of different elevation bins. This simple approach requires a compromise between having bins that are too large such that insufficient detail can be extracted, and too small such that an underlying signal is obscured by noise. Alternatively, a graph of cumulative area (0–100%) with altitude can be plotted to show the relative proportion of a region at a specific elevation, known as the hypsometric curve. The elevations may be normalized relative to the range of elevations in the study area (value-minimum)/(maximum-minimum), and the area under this normalized curve is the hypsometric integral, which by definition lies between 0 and 1. ...