Notions of Scale in Geosciences

Abstract

The paper discusses the notion scale within geosciences. The high complexity of the developed models and the wide range of partici- pating disciplines goes along with different notions of scale used during data acquisition and model building. The paper collects the different no- tions of scale shows the close relations between the different notions: map scale, resolution, window size, average wavelength, level of aggregation, level of abstraction. Finally the problem of identifying scale in models is discussed. A synopsis of the continuous measures for scale links the different notions.