Spatial Concept Perspectives

We have gathered ~300 excerpts from published works about fundamental spatial concept terms. These have been cross-referenced with the concept lexicon appearing on the left. Those terms were drawn from the U.S.National Science Education Standards (NSES 1996) for topic areas B - Physical Science, C - Life Science, D - Earth and Space Science, as well as from the 1994 U.S. Geography Teaching Standards for grades 9-12. Those standards can be browsed here.

spatial concept terms

disciplinary perspectives on "field"

field

Conceptualizing the geographic world as a series of continuous surfaces, each mapping location to the value of some variable, permits representations of gradient, slope, aspect, and allows for volumetric analysis, visibility analysis, and least-cost paths. In "...the continuous-field view, reality is a collection of continuous surfaces, each representing the variation of one property over the Earth's surface. When it is necessary to differentiate by height, the field becomes three-dimensional rather than two-dimensional, and time may add a fourth dimension.

Geography

de Smith, et al. (2008)

Geospatial Analysis: A comprehensive guide to principles, techniques, and software tools

field

[OED]: 17. a. Physics. The area or space under the influence of, or within the range of, some agent; a state or situation in which a force is exerted on any objects of a particular kind (e.g. electric charges) that are present; the action of such a force; the value (or direction) at any point of the force on an object defined as having unit magnitude, or the set of the vectors that represent this force at each point in a region.

Linguistics

OED Online (2nd Ed.)

Oxford English Dictionary, Online Edition

fields in space and time

Topic CF4-3. Define a field in terms of properties, space, and time; Identify applications and phenomena that are not adequately modeled by the field view; Identify examples of discrete and continuous change found in spatial, temporal, and spatio-temporal fields; Differentiate various sources of fields, such as substance properties (e.g., temperature), artificial constructs (e.g., population density), and fields of potential or influence (e.g., gravity); Formalize the notion of field using mathematical functions and calculus; Relate the notion of field in GIS to the mathematical notions of scalar and vector fields; Recognize the influences of scale on the perception and meaning of fields; Evaluate the representation of movement as a field of location over time [e.g.,

Geography
Education

DiBiase, et al. (2006)

Geographic Information Science and Technology Body of Knowledge

interpolation

Reconstruction of the underlying continuous field of data from the limited evidence of the control points, called interpolation, is an example of the classic missing data problem in statistics. Whatever type of surface is involved and whatever control points are used, the objective is to produce a field of values to some satisfactory level of accuracy relative to the intended subsequent use of the data (p. 215). Spatial interpolation is the prediction of exact values of attributes at unsampled locations from measurements made at control points within the same area (p. 220).

Geography

O'Sullivan and Unwin (2002)

Geographic Information Analysis

objects and fields

Discrete objects and continuous fields are fundamental conceptualizations of space and the basis for models of process. Spatial objects are the things that occupy the geographic world, described and measured in various ways as points, lines, areas, or volumes. The discrete-objects perspective is a traditional way of characterizing spatial patterns and is embedded in the uses of geospatial tools such as cartographic mapping and GIS. Powerful insights into spatial processes often require a re-conceptualization of phenomena from objects to fields.

Social Science

Janelle and Goodchild (2011)

Concepts, Principles, Tools, and Challenges in Spatially Integrated Social Science