Visualizing Ecological Data in Virtual Reality

Authors

Jiawei Huang, Pennsylvania State University - Main Campus
Melissa Lucash, Portland State UniversityFollow
Robert M. Scheller, North Carolina State UniversityFollow
Alexander Klippel, Pennsylvania State University - Main Campus

Sponsor

This work is supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant #1617396. We also wish to thank Barry (Ty) Wilson at the US Forest Service for providing forest maps and guidance for creating our initial maps of tree species composition.

Published In

2019 IEEE Conference on Virtual Reality and 3D User Interfaces (VR)

Document Type

Citation

Publication Date

8-2019

Abstract

Visualizing complex scientific data and models in 2D can be challenging. The result can be hard to interpret and understand for the general audience, and the model accuracy hard to evaluate even for the experts. To address these problems, we created a workflow that translates data of an ecological model, LANDIS-II, into a high-fidelity 3D model in virtual reality (VR). We combined ecological modeling, analytical modeling, procedural modeling, and VR, to allow users to experience a forest in northern Wisconsin (WI), United States, under two climate scenarios. Users can explore and interact with the forest under different climate scenarios, explore the impacts of climate change on different tree species, and retrieve information from a 3D tree database. The VR application can be used as an educational tool for the general public, and as a model checking tool by researchers.

Description

©2019 IEEE

Locate the Document

http://doi.org/10.1109/VR.2019.8797771

DOI

10.1109/VR.2019.8797771

Persistent Identifier

https://archives.pdx.edu/ds/psu/33060

Citation Details

J. Huang, M. S. Lucash, R. M. Scheller and A. Klippel, "Visualizing Ecological Data in Virtual Reality," 2019 IEEE Conference on Virtual Reality and 3D User Interfaces (VR), Osaka, Japan, 2019, pp. 1311-1312, doi: 10.1109/VR.2019.8797771.