Easiest way is to learn the modeling tools, then you'd have a good understanding of how to go about it.
Heres how I would do it, either take a nurbs plane, push and pull points to get a ruff envirment...or take a plane , add a well made displacment map, then convert displacment to polys to get a ruff envirnment.
Then, since you're using maya you have the opentions of using Paint FX to get some nice background tress ect... then of course the landscape ground, banks, ect is all a matter of creating the right shaders.
