Three-Dimensional, Low-Resolution Desktop Geomorphometric Modelling of the Arctic Ocean Floor

Submarine topography is one of the main factors determining the course and direction of processes occurring at the boundary between lithosphere and hydrosphere. We present results of the first phase of a project to create a system for three-dimensional (3D) geomorphometric modelling of the Arctic Ocean floor. In this phase, we developed a test, desktop version of the system. We utilized a small, 10-km gridded digital elevation model (DEM) extracted from the International Bathymetric Chart of the Arctic Ocean (IBCAO) version 3.0. From the DEM, we derived digital models of several morphometric variables: horizontal, vertical, minimal, and maximal curvatures, as well as catchment and dispersive areas. To construct and visualize 3D morphometric models of the territory, we applied an original approach for 3D terrain modelling in the environment of the Blender package, free and open-source software. We present a series of 3D morphometric models with perspective views from the Atlantic, Eurasia, the Pacific, and North America. The experiment showed that the approach is efficient and can be used for creating next, desktop and web versions of the system for visualizing morphometric models with higher resolutions.