The structure of global lithosphere is very important to the scientific researches of tectonic movement, geodynamic process, mantle convection, resource exploration, and disaster prevention and reduction. Three-dimensional (3D) spatial modelling and visualization is an effective tool for lithosphere researches. However, both the isoline/profile methods and the Euclidean-based 3D modelling methods cannot meet the requirement of real 3D modeling of global lithosphere, whereas the recently developed global 3D grid methods have some defects on grid design, such as grid shrinkage, overlapping, non-orthogonality, and nonlatitude-longitude consistency. In this paper, Spheroid Degenerated-Octree Grid (SDOG), a non-overlapping, non-shrinking, orthogonal, latitude-longitude consistent grid in the spheroidal manifold space, was chosen as the basic grid for global lithosphere 3D modeling and visualization. The SDOG-based methods of spatial representation and modelling of lithosphere were proposed. A multi-scale model of lithosphere was designed, and the multi-scale modeling and multi-mode visualization were realized at the full advantages of SDOG in multi-hierarchical and multi-resolution and the properties of lithosphere in multi-semantic. It shows that (1) the SDOG-based method has not only overcome the defects of the current global 3D grid, but also reflected the spherical features of lithosphere more realistically and naturally than the traditional methods, providing a novel solution for global modeling, numeric simulating, and data sharing of lithosphere; and (2) more detailed plates division, more precise geo-layer structure, plates boarder and surface concave-convex, and more rich lithosphere properties are revealed as the scale-model moves on.
