Resumen
This paper aims to propose a new approach to calculate the quantitative relations between morphostructural similarity degree and map scale change in multi-scale contour clusters for automatic contour generalization. Terrain lines were extracted by pre-processing of unclosed contour lines, and an indirect quantitative expression method of morphostructural similarity relation was proposed based on terrain line hierarchical trees. Thirteen groups of multi-scale contour clusters with different drainage areas of loess geomorphy were employed to explore the changing regularity of morphostructural similarity indices with map scale. Finally, the quantitative relations between morphostructural similarity degree and map scale change were calculated using 52 groups of points. The results show that power function is the best fit among the candidate functions, and the quantitative relations between the morphostructural similarity degree and map scale change can be expressed using the same power function, which facilitates the automation of contour generalization.