CONTOUR LINES OF THE TERRAIN AND THEIR GENERALIZATION 
Let us consider the contour lines of the Norwegian area, as depicted 
on a topographic map, at scale 1:5.000 (figure 8). 
  
NJ 
N A 
Figure 8. Contour lines of the topographic map 1:5.000, south-east 
of Oslo, Norway. Redrawn from C.T.-031.5.1 Bredholt, Fjel- 
langer Widerge A/S, 1964. 
  
We notice that the contour lines have a much smoother appearance than 
the profile of figure 5. Analysing the contour lines, we obtain an 
average dimension D = 1.09, confirming our impression of a very smooth 
curve. However, the selfsimilarity of the contours proved still pre- 
served. 
It is not quite obvious to us, why contours and profiles should have 
such different roughness and different dimension, since they are 
ideally just different intersections of the terrain with planes. But, 
we must remember the effects of generalization on the contour line by 
the cartographer, who represents the terrain smoother than reality, 
but still selfsimilar in nature. 
The selfsimilar behaviour of contours is usually intuitively maintained 
in map generalizations. Figure 9, shows the spectra of shorelines of 
Swedish lakes as computed from different map scales (Hàkanson, 1978). 
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