Chapter 5 How to show relief on maps?

How to show relief on maps?

‘Section A Core Module 2
Living with Natural Hazards’ Relief refers to the height changes of land. Colouring and
and‘Section B Core
contouring are methods to show the relief of land on maps. Besides,
Module 2 The Trouble of
Water’require students to conventional signs (spot height and trigonometric station) are used to
master the skills of finding
the heights of places from indicate specific heights.
contour maps.
1 Colouring
N
Colouring is a method to
show the relief of land with the Mount Butler
use of colours. In general, brown 435 532Mount Parker

refers to highlands, and green Mount Collinson

Violet Hill
347
refers to lowlands. 433

Height (m)

Figure 1 A map using colouring to show the relief of

Mount Parker and its surroundings

2 Contouring
Contouring is the most common method to show relief on maps.
It uses contour lines to join spots with the same height in order to
describe the relief of land.

Figure 2 A map (1:20,000) using contouring to show the

relief of Mount Parker

relief 地勢  colouring 着色法  contouring 等高線法  spot height 高程點

trigonometric station 三角網測站  contour line 等高線
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 3 Conventional signs
Refer to Figure 2 on
Page 65, and answer Trigonometric stations and spot
the following questions.
heights are conventional signs which
1. What is the height of
the highest peak? specify the heights of places or peaks.
532m The height shown by a trigonometric
2. Which conventional station is precisely measured. A spot
sign is used to show
height is similar to a trigonometric
the above height?
station, but the height shown by the
Spot height /
Trigonometric former is of lower accuracy.
station
The conventional signs on maps
are shown below:
Figure 3 The beacon placed at locations with a
●● Trigonometric station trigonometric station on a map

●● Spot height or

5.1
Where are the high hills?
Figure A shows the relief map of Hong Kong. Study Figure A carefully and answer the following questions.

Figure A

Wong Leng
639

Grassy
Tai Mo Shan Hill Ma On Sha
957 647 702

Lion Rock
495
Height (m)
>600
Sunset Victoria Peak 301-600
Lantau Peak Peak 552 101-300
869
934 0-100
Trigonometric
station
Spot height
1: 550,000

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 Chapter 5 How to show relief on maps?

1 a. The highest hill in the figure is Tai Mo Shan , with a height of

957 m, which is shown by a (spot height / trigonometric station).

b. Apart from the answer in Question 1a, identify three other hills which are above 700m in the figure. In
the table below, write down their names and heights, and circle the ways that the heights are shown.

Name Height Way of showing the height

Lantau Peak 934m Spot height / Trigonometric station

Sunset Peak 869m Spot height / Trigonometric station

Ma On Sha 702m Spot height / Trigonometric station

2 Which island has highlands above 600m?

Lantau Island

3 Where are the lowlands mainly distributed in Hong Kong?

The northwestern part of the New Territories and along the coasts of the Victoria Harbour.

4 Describe the relief of Hong Kong.

The relief of Hong Kong is (hilly with few flatlands / flat with few hills).

How to understand the heights of

places from contour maps?
1 What is vertical interval?
On a contour map,
0m N
60
On a map, the vertical the height difference 0m
interval is always the 50
same.
between two adjacent 0m
40
contour lines is known 0m
30
as vertical interval.
m
With reference to Figure Vertical interval 200
Refer to Figure 2 on = 400m – 300m
Page 65, what is the 4, the vertical interval is
vertical interval of the = 100m
100m.
map?
0m
20m 1:10,000 10

Figure 4

vertical interval 垂直間距  adjacent 相鄰的

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 2 How can we find the heights of places on
contour maps?
N
E

20
0m
15
0m
10
F C A

0m
50
m
D

0 50

Figure 5

Figure 5 shows the locations of A to F. All spots on the same contour

Refer to Figure 5, what
is the approximate line have the same height. For example, as A and E are both on the 200m
height of F? contour line, the heights of A and E are both 200m. As B lies on the
140m
coastline, which is the 0m contour line, its height is 0m.

For the spots lying between two contour lines, we can only estimate
their heights. Since C is found between the contour lines of 150m and
200m, we can use the following methods to estimate its height.
Table 1

Method 1: Method 2:
Using the values of contour lines Using vertical interval

150m + 200m 50m

150m +
2 2
= 175m = 175m

As D is close to the 50m contour line, the height is estimated to be

60m.

coastline 海岸線
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 Chapter 5 How to show relief on maps?

5.2
Finding the heights
Study Figure A carefully and answer the following questions.

Figure A

598

563
300m

550
m

500
m

45
0m
400m
350m

523
289 330

500
m
304
275 0 25

300 m

1 Complete the missing part of the 300m contour line on Figure A.

2 What is the vertical interval of Figure A?

50m

3 What are the approximate heights of the following places?

W: 475m X: 410m

Y: 295m Z: 360m

4 What is the height difference of the highest and the lowest spots in Figure A?
598m－275m = 323m

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