I found myself more interested in what you guys had to say about scale than the texts! or at least more inspired…
One point that is really interesting is that we have fancy techniques to choose a right scale to study a problem but in the end, the scale problem persists. Here again I think that this is a good scientific problem because the researcher has to ask questions and analyze the tools he is using in defining his questions and his methods. This is why I disagree with Point McPolygon’s point at the end of his blog saying that we should develop the technology more rather than attempting to define what is the right scale of study. I think that revealing scale issues is part of the science, and that it is important to study this instead of merely relying on the technology, which anyway is subject to human development and thus human’s understanding of the scale issue…
Wyatt ask is we can be accountable for issues of scale. Maybe by questioning the appropriate scale to use and the appropriate way to transfer information across scale is revealing a problem that we might not completely solve but being transparent about the process is a step towards not lying with the map and accountability.
The example of adapting to climate change brought up by Victor Manuel is really interesting on my point of view. Different strategies are implemented at different scale of governance (country, region, municipality, communities), using different types of information or different ‘granularity of information’. On top of it dynamics occur between the scale of governance and thus between information. Defining the appropriate scale of information would depend on the scale of governance that your studying. Although most importantly in this case would probably be the problem of transferring information from one scale to the other. This is a very difficult task because of the issues related to MAUP,… mentioned in the texts, but also because of the meaning that the different scale of governance gives to geospatial areas, entities, concepts, processes,…
S_Ram