The challenges of visualizing and modeling environmental data

Existing volume visualization techniques are typically applied to a three-dimensional grid. This presents some challenging problems in the visualization of environmental data. This data often consists of unevenly distributed samples. Typically a two-step approach is used to visualize environmental data. First the unevenly distributed sample data are modeled onto a uniform 3-D grid. This grid model is subsequently rendered using conventional grid-based visualization techniques. This paper discusses some of the limitations of this approach and highlights areas where further research is needed to improve the accuracy of visualization for environmental applications.