Abstract
An algorithm of land surface partitioning from DEM into "massifs" as land units associated with summits is presented with applications on the islands of Cyprus and Crete. The first step is based on the D8 method (steepest descent lines) but applies on the inverted elevations of the original DEM which provide then the steepest ascent lines converging toward summits providing the pattern of initial massifs, each of them being associated to one and only one local maximum (so called summit). In the second step, the stepwise iteration will progressively merge the initial massifs into larger and larger ones associated to several summits until all the land surface will be aggregated into one massif related to the highest summit of the DEM. This method called MAPAM (MAssifs PArtitioning Method) is valuable to depict the landform patterns at different scales but also for operational research such as optimization of transportation pathways, relay transmitter network or semantic zoom of elevations on GIS platform.