I need to depict the areas that a landfill will be visible within a 3-mile radius at the current height.
After pouring over the ARC Visibility toolset page, my thought is that the Viewshed tool is the best way to address this. For the input raster data I used an STRM raster which includes vegetation and building heights and added it to a land surface DEM to get an elevation/vegetation & building hybrid raster. For the input line observer feature I used a line feature class outlining the current footprint of the landfill. Seems simple enough. After running the tool, it looks pretty good.
Here is my concern. My understanding is that all the areas that are visible from the landfill looking out get classified as visible. But the goal here is really the opposite. Most of the time this detail doesn’t seem to matter. I “field checked” some points through google earth streetview and it seemed to match up well. The areas I noticed an issue is where there is very tall tree cover. These locations are being classified as visible, I think because the tree tops are visible from the landfill. But for this analysis, when looking from land surface (where a person would be looking from) those trees actually obscure the view. Is this a valid concern and if so, how could this be adressed?
This is my first time using any 3D analysis tools.