Generate random land cover from biome data

[oubiwann]

• This should be procedural
• Generation with hashes should obviate the need for storing results

Tasks:

• Put in place basic API for reading pixel data
• Open biome scale file, read colors
• Open biome image, read pixels
• Confirm color values for all pixels match (and do not fall outside of) color definitions in scale file
• Define initial vegetation distributions for each biome
  • Read up on Add land cover lookup raster#21
  • Figure out which types of land cover distribution algorithms to support (see How should land cover be distributed? #8)
  • Implement these, generating land-cover *.ron color files
• Put in place a general tile creation mechanism - Investigate a data strcuture to represent land cover #5
• For a given biome, support generating tiles with subtiles having different land cover types
• For every pixel read in from biome image, generate a hash that can be used to repeadedly get the same vegetation distribution (so there's no need to store all that in a database)

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land_cover:

Depends upon:

• Provide a basic API capable of supporting projects like hexagram30 oxur/image-data#1
• Add support for pixel lookup oxur/image-data#3
• Add a hash method for <x,y> coord oxur/image-data#4
• Add color extraction functions oxur/image-data#5
• Use image-data lib to pull in biomes data #1
• Investigate a data strcuture to represent land cover #5
• How should land cover be distributed? #8

Copied from:

• Generate random land cover from biome data client#6
• Generate random land cover from biome data oubiwann/tech-reflects#5
• Add land cover lookup raster#21

[oubiwann]

I've added #8 as a dep, since we need to figure out how we want land cover to be distributed over different biomes.

[oubiwann]

From https://www.geo.arizona.edu/Antevs/biomes/ and https://science.jrank.org/pages/897/Biome.html:

• Polar
  • No vegetation
• Tundra
  • sedges, lichens, mosses, grasses, and dwarf woody plants
  • wet: meadows of sedge, cotton-grass, and grass
  • dry: shurbs
  • snowy owls, caribou, muskox, reindeer, polar bears, and migrant birds
• Boreal Forest
  • fir, larch, white spruce, black spruce, and jack pine; aspen, birch, poplar, and willow
  • moose, black bears, wolves, and migrant birds
• Temperate Forest
  • ash, basswood, birch, cherry, chestnut, dogwood, elm, hickory, magnolia, maple, oak, tulip-tree, walnut, spruce, pine, fir
  • wet: auraucaria
  • deer and squirrels
• Temperate Rainforest
  • Douglas fir, hemlock, cedar, redwood, spruce, and yellow cypress
• Grasslands
  • tall grass: sunflowers and blazing stars
  • grasses and members of the sunflower family
  • large grazing ungulates such as horses, buffalo, and rhinoceros
• Chaparral
  • oaks, manzanita, chamise, low pines, and junipers
  • dwarf forest and shrubs, and interspersed herbaceous vegetation
  • birds and reptiles
• Desert
  • cactuses, acacias and short-lived annuals
  • reptiles and ground-dwelling rodents
• Tropical Deciduous Forest and Savannah
  • acacias and grasses
  • giraffes and elephants
  • gazelles and other antelopes, rhinos, elephant, hippopotamus, and buffalo, and some of their predators, such as lion, cheetah, wild dog, and hyena
• Tropical Rain Forest
  • strangler figs and tree ferns
  • snakes and birds