Some recent land surface models can explicitly represent land surface
process and focus more on sub-grid terrestrial features. Many studies
have involved the analysis of how hillslope water dynamics determine
vegetation patterns and shape ecologically and hydrologically important
landscapes, such as desert riparian and waterlogged areas. However, the
global locations and abundance of hillslope-dominated landscapes remain
unclear. To address this knowledge gap, we propose a globally applicable
method that employs high-resolution elevation, hydrography, and land
cover data to neatly resolve explicit land cover heterogeneity for the
mapping of hillslope-dominated landscapes. First, we aggregate pixels
into unit catchments to represent topography-based hydrological units,
and then vertically discretize them into height bands to approximate the
hillslope profile. The dominant land cover type in each height band is
determined, and the uphill land cover transition is analyzed to identify
hillslope-dominated landscapes. The results indicate that
hillslope-dominated landscapes are distributed extensively worldwide in
diverse climate zones. Notably, some landscapes, including gallery
forests in northeastern Russia and desert riparian in the Horn of
Africa, are newly revealed. Furthermore, the proposed strategy enables
more accurate representation of explicit land cover heterogeneity than
does the simple downscaling of a rectangular grid from larger to smaller
units, revealing its capability to neatly resolve land cover
heterogeneity in land surface modeling with relatively high accuracy.
Overall, we present the extensive global distribution of landscapes
shaped by hillslope water dynamics, underscoring the importance of the
explicit resolution of heterogeneity in land surface modeling.