Horizontal scale of roughness variations for realistic landscapes

A method is described to infer the horizontal scale of roughness variations from land-use maps, for use in flux aggregation schemes designed to account for sub-grid scale terrain heterogeneity in numerical models of the atmosphere. Based on simple statistical-geometrical considerations, it is shown that this horizontal scale is inversely proportional to edge density, which can be readily derived from high-resolution land-use maps. The method is demonstrated for a highly heterogeneous landscape in northern Belgium, the resulting length scale values approximately ranging between 200 and 1500 m. Finally, the extension towards satellite imagery and coarse land-use data is discussed.