How to use use very large environments in one continuous simulation? (Via procedurally loading, etc)

Hello, I am hoping to utilize Gazebo to create a simulator for ships and UAVs in large ocean environments, probably using UUV simulator which is essentially a set of gazebo plugins on top of the base software. The only problem is that the environments I would be using are exceptionally large (say 30 km by 30 km) and based on the [digital elevation model](http://gazebosim.org/tutorials?tut=dem) tutorial, "Usually, DEM files have big resolutions and **Gazebo cannot handle it**". Thus it seems Gazebo cannot handle loading large DEM based terrain. In light of this, I was planning on splitting the terrain into chunks, say 1 km by 1km, and then as the vehicle moves through the environment the terrain would be dynamically loaded and de-loaded depending on where the vehicle is. Could anyone please advise me if this is a realistic strategy, or if there is an alternative for working with large environments in Gazebo? Thank you.