ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the origins and impacts of semantic variation using the example of land cover. Through a text mining analysis, it seeks to determine the degree of overlap concepts associated with classes from divergent land cover classifications and to infer land cover change. The chapter examines the origins of semantic variation in land cover mapping and the philosophical process of categorization, comparing what might be called top-down and bottom-up nomenclatures. It examines the origins of semantic variation in land cover mapping. The chapter considers the influences of specific factors on geographic representation and the need to abstract the infinite complexity of the real world into spatial databases. It describes how the need for generalization processes such as abstraction and aggregation are a series of choices. Maps represent real-world features and implicitly describe their spatial properties. Their interpretation is supported by the usual cartographic adjuncts: legends, scale bars, north arrows, and so on.
