Issues of Scale and Representation in Geographic Data

Figuring out how best to represent spatially and temporally varying phenomena in a digital environment is a fascinating problem of scale, classification, and abstraction. The simple idea of representing the spatio-temporal variation of intra-urban population density is a good example of how this is not really a simple idea. In my efforts at modeling proxy measures of population density, economic activity, and ecosystem service value I have enjoyed struggling with these insurmountable problems and hope to make some contributions to methods that will inform our understanding of the roles these phenomena play in questions of sustainability.