Luckily, this map is pretty flat as far as the terrain in the legend shows...I was able to identify the forests and light forest areas as well as orchards and things like that. Still tedious as there's lots of details but contouring is gonna be a challenge as there's not an area that has any real elevations like mountains or peaks. Looks as though there are numerous contours which I'm not able to determine how to map it out at the moment.
Actually, there are lots of peaks, as the city of Carcassonne sits between the southwestern and southern foothills of the
Massif Central (just north of Carcassonne) and the Pyrenees (way south). On your map, there are plenty of elevations ranging from 300 - 800 meters with lots of "mini"-valleys carved in, just north and south of Carcassonne, while the Carcassonne area itself is relatively flat, indeed, but there are also some hill tops way south (N63/E79) with heights of 1,174 meters or even really rocky peaks (just north of Lauzadel, 942 meters).
If I am not mistaken, some of the rather soft slopes east (and partially west) of Carcassonne are used by winemakers, the entire
Languedoc region is a famous wine-growing region. Since the whole region suffers of a lack of water in summer, olive culture, fruit culture, cheese products, meat production and wine-growing are the only agricultural options in most parts of that region:
Wine-growing area near Minerve (northeast of Carcassonne), the small village (population: ~ 112) resides on a perimeter that used to be home to a fortress until ~1209 A.D.:
The bridge in Menerve, the rocky base and some parts of the medieval fortress base are still visible:
The Veraza - Peyrolles- Arques triangle (N77/E03):
I'd recommend to use the Google Earth 3D app, where you can do a flyover with your arrow keys or mouse over the region of interest, until we get access to the GIS-tool. This helps to understand the layout of the terrain.
You can also use the overlay function at opentopography.org:
The free online tool automatically creates a DEM + (external) map overlay (which takes ages in Google Earth 3D) after you have marked the region with a rectangle:
https://portal.opentopography.org/m...viz.alos.crhs.white.png&jobId=rt1613231685492
You can switch between the DEM image file and the google info or mix the terrain DEM info with a non-google map in a hybrid view, for instance ("terrain" setting -> show/hide layer).
The menu to create the img files:
https://portal.opentopography.org/r...xX=3.1585693359375004&maxY=43.511509812885436
You can use the topo info as underlay to create the terrain layers, and then the historical map to create the historical details (shapes of towns and cities and the layout of the road or track network).
Reminder: The historical US Army map (created in 1943) of the Carcassonne region was derived from several sources, ie. from French map material originating from 1909 - 1925 (Geo-Service of the French Army), some topo or non-topo maps from the French ministry of interior (printed between 1932 and 1942) and from Aerial recon (R.A.F. - 1943) images (which were used to revise parts of the outdated map). The road network in this map was solely taken from a pre-war Michelin road map (for civilian use, 1938), possibly (partially) updated using some R.A.F. images. Afaik, aerial recon over that region had become feasible when Allied forces advanced in Italy in 1943, but it was still a pretty dangerous business, as the Luftwaffe still guarded the French coastline (the Côte d'Améthyste and the Côte d'Azur).
So, while elevations didn't disappear and most of the topo layout remained the same, ofc, some small villages could have disappeared (since 1909 or say the 1920s), cities may have grown drastically, or new villages (not mapped in the source material) could have been formed, new streets been built or old/unused streets and tracks been reclaimed by nature.
The Western Allies struggled to come up with accurate map material for pretty much all territories occupied/politically controlled by the Germans, with German regions being the toughest nuts for Allied mappers.
For instance, Allied detail maps of Germany's western regions (eg. the Hürtgen area or the Eiffel mountain ranges) used on the Bn or Coy level often didn't even contain elevation data - let alone contour lines, as civilian road maps from the 1930s used to be the main (and sometimes only) sources here, quite often, sometimes blended with info from maps covering major cities, their suburbs and the surrounding areas (created for and/or obtained in German city archives and mayor offices between 1922 and 1925), where then the end result was revised by comparing the result to recent (1943/1944) aerial recon images.
So what you see on the Carcassonne map is a wild mix of outdated info blended with some recent (1943) but incomplete aerial recon intel and a civilian grade road map from 1938 for some 10.4 Francs (0.75 Reichsmark or 30 US cents in 1938).