Page 20 - Modern Spatiotemporal Geostatistics

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SPATIOTEMPORAL MAPPING IN
NATURAL SCIENCES

"Science is built of facts, as a house is built of stones;
but an accumulation of facts is no more a science
than a heap of stones is a house." H. Poincare

Mapping Fundamentals

The urge to map a natural pattern, an evolutionary process, a biological land-
scape, a set of objects, a series of events, etc., is basic in every scientific
domain. Indeed, the mapping concept is deeply rooted in the human desire for
spatiotemporal understanding: What are the specific distributions of proteins
in cells? What are the locations of atoms in biological molecules? What is
the distribution of potentially harmful contaminant concentrations in the sub-
surface? What are the genetic distances of human populations throughout
a continent? What are the prevailing weather patterns over a region? How
large is the ozone hole? How many light-years do galaxies cover? Answers to
all these questions—extending from the atomic to the cosmic—are ultimately
provided by means of good, science-based spatiotemporal maps.
Furthermore, studies in the cognitive sciences have shown that maps are
particularly suitable for the human faculty of perception, both psychological
and neurological (Anderson, 1985; Gregory, 1990). These faculties can most
efficiently recognize characteristic elements of information when it is contained
in a map that helps us build visual pictures of the world. Every scientific disci-
pline depends fundamentally on the faculty of perception in order to interpret
a process, derive new insights, conceptualize and integrate the unknown.
What exactly is a spatiotemporal map? The answer to this question de-
pends upon one's point of view, which is, in turn, based on one's scientific
background and practical needs. From a geographer's point of view, a map is
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