ABSTRACT

This chapter presents important scientific principles related to the fundamentals of geographic information and maps. For centuries, geographers and others have had a core need to represent human, natural, and other activities at the earth’s surface. This need has led to the development of several core concepts and ideas that guide representation of the earth and can have strong influence on how those representations (i.e., maps) affect interpretation of mapped items. For example, and as you will see later in this chapter, the choice of map projection can have significant consequences on how a given piece of geography is represented in terms of shape and size.