ANALYSIS ON VISUALIZATION OF THE SUBMARINE LANDFORM OF SOUTH CHINA SEA AND ITS GEOLOGICAL MEANINGS

Submarine landform is the basic information of marine geology,marine geophysics,oceanography and marine biology research and is one of the important factors which affect the distribution of marine constituents.Visualization is the key to understanding the topographical data and provides a special way of revealing the relationship and laws between submarine landform and other marine factors.The visualization of the topographical information,including rendering map and three-dimensional visualization,and the profile analysis of South China Sea were realized based on Vertical Mapper which was embedded into the desktop Geographic Information System software MapInfo Professional in this paper.Overlay of submarine landform information and other marine constituents such as the surface layer sediment types and ocean current were analyzed.And the spatial correlation of the distribution of surface layer sediment types and visualized submarine landform and ocean current were discussed based on overlay analysis,which suggests that the visualization of submarine landform information has significant meanings to interpret the marine geological phenomena.