Spatial prediction of climate, soil, and macrofauna

Geomorphometric variables have been used for decades for several objectives, e.g. the prediction of soil loss determined by slope, or colluvial erosion and accumulation caused by type and degree of curvature particularly in agriculture (Seiler 1982). Another field of application is geotechnique, e.g. the estimation of landslide susceptibility, depending on so-called form elements of certain plan and profile curvature and slope gradients (Dikau 1990). Gardner et al. 1990 describe the rapid increase in the possibilities of DEM analysis; today, e.g. even complex hydrological features such as stream orders can be calculated very fast.