Exploring Spatial Scale in Geography

by Christopher D. Lloyd

Exploring Spatial Scale in Geography provides a conceptual and practical guide to issues of spatial scale in all areas of the physical and social sciences. Scale is at the heart of geography and other spatial sciences. Whether dealing with geomorphological processes, population movements or meteorology, a consideration of spatial scale is vital. Exploring Spatial Scale in Geography takes a practical approach with a core focus on real world problems and potential solutions. Links are made to appropriate software environments with an associated website providing access to guidance material which outlines how particular problems can be approached using popular GIS and spatial data analysis software.This book offers alternative definitions of spatial scale, presents approaches for exploring spatial scale and makes use of a wide variety of case studies in the physical and social sciences to demonstrate key concepts, making it a key resource for anyone who makes use of geographical information.

272 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 2014

Reviews

[Peter Aronson · Rating 4 out of 5]

Three-and-a-half stars, rounded up. (Caveat: I haven't taken a Spatial Statistics course in 36 years, and I haven't used that material since, so much of this book was tough sledding for me, particularly as Spatial Statistics are the major focus for the majority of the book.) This is a small, but very dense book that approaches geographic scale through a large variety of mechanism (mostly statistical, but there is a chapter about approaches using fractals). It achieves its small size primarily by referencing other material -- a lot of other material. (And they appear to be very useful references.) Almost no subject is covered with any degree of completeness. Even the case studies are shown in summary. I, at least, would have found this a more useful book with more background material and with some more complete presentation of some of the case studies (of course, to someone else these may have provided more chapters to skip). There is also less time spent than I would like on the actual interpretation of the various measures covered, and the possible traps you could fall into with their misuse in interpreting spatial scale. But still, it covers a lot of territory and gives you places to start on many particular topics.

The book would also benefit from a glossary or list of abbreviations, since it uses so many (the index is actually pretty good, but is less than ideal for quickly looking up acronyms, of which this book uses many).