ABSTRACT
Landscape ecologists use the term scale to indicate relative level of detail in data according to size (or grain) of grid cells and polygons. A multitude of small (fine-grained) grid cells or polygons are considered as being larger scale than fewer more expansive (coarse-grained) ones. Larger scale data thus provide more detail under map enlargement than smaller scale data. The coarser grain of smaller scale data usually entails aggregating, aver aging, or interpolating over larger spans of distance and area. Smaller scale data are therefore of lower resolution and tend to have less fidelity with local (site) measurements of the same variable than larger scale data. This sense of scale is compatible with, but different from, the cartographic concept of proportional relation between dimensions of terrain features and their representations on maps.
