Representing, Modeling, and Visualizing the Natural Environment

Representing, Modeling, and Visualizing the Natural Environment is a twenty-two-chapter collection of papers based on the 2006 and 2007 meetings of the Geographical Information Science Research UK (GISRUK) Conference Series, held at the University of Nottingham (2006) and at the National University of Ireland, Maynooth (2007). This volume provides an interesting cross-section of geographic information science research being undertaken by researchers in the U.K., Europe, North America, Africa, Asia, and Australia.

The papers are divided into three groups, each focusing on the application of GIS and GIScience to the natural environment. These thematic groups are: representation, modeling, and visualization. The opening chapter provides a clear introduction to the context and scope of the volume, defining the range of ‘natural environments’ considered in various explorations of the three main research themes, and providing a useful overview of how GIS/GIScience has been applied to geographic challenges to date. The authors use this as a foundation to establish the key objective of the volume: to explore how GIS/GIScience as we know it is being applied in increasingly public arenas, using a range of new techniques and technologies to visualize and interact with representations and models of natural environments.

The volume provides a thoughtful selection of methods and contexts to explore these three main themes. Eight chapters explore the topic of representation. Six chapters consider modeling of the natural environment. Seven chapters discuss visualization research in this field. The overall quality of papers is high, and a credit to the conference series and the editorial team. A keynote paper opens each of the three theme groups in this collection. These keynote chapters usefully situate the research reported in each thematic category. ... Given the wide range of research endeavors represented by the papers inclu