Some scaling issues of geography

Abstract

The pattern, process and their relationships are fundamental issues in geography. Patterns and processes in nature, such as ecosystem distribution, regional climatic changes, land use and land cover, and rainfall or runoff series, display complex behavior and often intertwine with scale problems. Many scale-dependent phenomena have been exemplified in scientific researches, and scale issues are found at the center of methodological discussions in both physical and human geography. However, some existed research works failed to make a distinction among the concepts of scale and scaling, to employ consistent scaling paradigm, and to adopt an objective criterion for assessing the scaling effects in geography. This paper attempts to calibrate those deviations and to present new branch subject of geography-Scaling Methodology of Geography. After introducing scaling approaches, upscaling and downscaling, in geography, we place a focus on the research objects, categories and contents of proposed subjects, and three basic principles, scientific principle, economic principle and operational principle, are proposed in scaling works. Finally, ten key issues are presented for establishing the scaling methodology of geography. The key questions are as follows: (1) how does spatial heterogeneity scale in scaling ? (2) how do ratio variables change with scale in scaling? (3) how do dominating processes change with scale in scaling? (4) how does property of processes change with scale in scaling? (5) how does sensitivity change with scale in scaling? (6) how does predictability change with scale in scaling? (7) what is sufficiency for simple aggregation and disaggregation in scaling? (8) how do disturbance factors change with scale in scaling? (9) can scaling transcend several scales and scale fields? (10) is noise factor changeable with scale in scaling?