Terrain erosion has its place in computer graphics and the applications range from virtual reality to the film industry. The erosion algorithm run on real data (e.g. obtained from satellite photos) can be considered as a simulation and therefore provides practical results useful in ecology, GIS, etc.
Terrain erosion models can be divided into two classes. First class of algorithms generate already eroded terrain. Methods in this class are fast but cannot be used for physical simulation of real terrain. Second class is usable on any terrain and therefore provides physical simulation of erosion processes. However, it is very time consuming.
Moreover all methods presented in this paper simulate just one kind of erosion.
Future work includes solving the problem of speeding up all the algorithms as well as their parallel implementation. Another problem is implementation of general methods of erosion that include wide classes of erosion.