"Most of the topics in this encyclopedia will remain important for years to come. Many of the topics here are germane to geography such as the Modifiable Areal Unit Problem, spatial autocorrelation, mental maps, and scale. For these reasons as well as for its sheer readability and usefulness, I believe that this book will serve as a practical reference for geography and GIS educators, practitioners, and university students long into the future. It′s not a reference for taking up space on the shelf, but one for the top of the desk, to be referred to often."
—Dr. Joseph J. Kerski, ESRI Education Manager

Geographic information science (GIScience) is an emerging field that combines aspects of many different disciplines. Spatial literacy is rapidly becoming recognized as a new, essential pier of basic education, alongside grammatical, logical and mathematical literacy. By incorporating location as an essential but often overlooked characteristic of what we seek to understand in the natural and built environment, geographic information science (GIScience) and systems (GISystems) provide the conceptual foundation and tools to explore this new frontier.

The Encyclopedia of Geographic Information Science covers the essence of this exciting, new, and expanding field in an easily understood but richly detailed style. In addition to contributions from some of the best recognized scholars in GIScience, this volume contains contributions from experts in GIS′ supporting disciplines who explore how their disciplinary perspectives are expanded within the context of GIScience—what changes when consideration of location is added, what complexities in analytical procedures are added when we consider objects in 2, 3 or even 4 dimensions, what can we gain by visualizing our analytical results on a map or 3D display?

Key Features  


Brings together GIScience literature that is spread widely across the academic spectrum
Offers details about the key foundations of GIScience, no matter what their disciplinary origins
Elucidates vocabulary that is an amalgam of all of these fields

Key Themes


Conceptual Foundations
Cartography and Visualization
Design Aspects
Data Manipulation
Data Modeling
Geocomputation
Geospatial Data
Societal Issues
Spatial Analysis
Organizational and Institutional Aspects

The Encyclopedia of Geographic Information Science is an important resource for academic and corporate libraries.