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I would like to create a series of random theoretical landscapes (DEM) of the same size with certain parameters ranges (e.g. slope range, elevation range) and ideally with the option of defining the number of valleys.

The goal is to generate different landscapes of different complexities that will be used as a based for further simulations related to forest change.

How can I do this using QGIS?

I have found very cool tools to create video games landscapes but I cannot define the exact ranges or create randomly.

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    Cant you download a DEM of some area, pan around until you find what you want: search.earthdata.nasa.gov/… . Or build an algorithm to find the area
    – Bera
    Commented Sep 6, 2021 at 11:39
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    Welcome to GIS SE. As a new user, please take the Tour, which emphasizes the importance of asking One question per Question. We use a Focused question/Best answer model, so specifying two tools is effectively two questions. Given that you have a QGIS answer, I suggest you Edit this question to focus on QGIS.
    – Vince
    Commented Sep 6, 2021 at 13:43
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    GIS is not really made to create imaginary landscapes. Of course you can manually do that, no problem. But using random tools to automate the process will probably not give a realistic result for you. Rather take a look at other tools like world-machine.
    – MrXsquared
    Commented Sep 6, 2021 at 13:47
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    If you can mathematically define precisely what you want then you can write a function in R to do it. You'd need to define what you mean by, for example, "four valleys" mathematically though. But generating surfaces given scales and correlations is a standard statistical process. They might not look like landscapes though, but they'd be a start you could add some erosion process too.
    – Spacedman
    Commented Sep 6, 2021 at 14:08
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    Not by myself. But I know you can export the created terrain as tiff and then use QGIS to convert the tiff to ascii. Maybe also a direct export to ascii is possible, but not sure about that. Maybe you can also try to ask for a suitable software to do that at softwarerecs.stackexchange.com
    – MrXsquared
    Commented Sep 7, 2021 at 8:16

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You can start creating a raster layer with random values by selecting:

Processing -> Toolbox

then enter random in the filter field, and select one of the Create random raster layer options:

enter image description here

if that is not enough, enter calculator in the same filtering field, and select Raster calculator. There you can input any sort of algebric/logic expression to edit the previously created random raster.

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