Vancouver's landscape -- the land surface of the Vancouver metropolitan area -- has formed through the action of diverse natural processes operating over the vast expanse of geological time. Many of the photographs surrounding the central shaded-relief map show natural processes that are slowly modifying the land surface and that impose important constraints on land use. Other photographs illustrate elements of the geological history of the Vancouver area that can be read from this landscape.

• Physiography
• Coast Mountains and Vancouver
• Cascade Mountains
• Sumas Prairie
• Ice Age Uplands
• Fraser River
• Fraser Delta
• Shorelines

• High resolution shaded relief map
  This simulated three-dimensional image was generated by a computer from Terrain Resource Inventory Map (TRIM) data produced by the British Columbia Surveys and Mapping Branch. Shading simulates illumination of the land surface by the sun. To enhance subtle features of the landscape, vertical distances have been exaggerated relative to horizontal distances. The faint north-trending grain at some places in the uplands is an artifact of the processing of the digital data.

Author: Bob Turner