With a little bit of context, the 3D elevation plot actually makes a lot of sense: http://www.nasa.gov/topics/earth/features/haiti20101014img.h...

It turns out it's like a continuous contour plot (showing deformation from a Haitian earthquake). Thanks to Google image search, such poorly documented images can be traced back to their source - and context! - quite quickly. This one was on the first page of results.