spatial@ucsb portal to resources for spatial thinking and spatial analysis
Classics in Spatial Thinking
More than 50 summaries and illustrations of major contributions to spatial thinking in the sciences, social sciences,and humanities. Your help is requested in suggesting topics, key papers, and schools of thought that should be represented in this collection—please send these to the Classics editor, Don Janelle.
TeachSpatial
TeachSpatial is a collaborative web site devoted to promoting applications of spatial concepts and spatial tools in teaching and learning. The site includes core concepts of spatial thinking, presented in the original words of authors from 20 source documents, as well as schemas that interpret, synthesize, and model aspects of spatial thinking.
Learn how fundamental Spatial Concepts facilitate spatial reasoning in the sciences and social sciences.
What is GIS? Explore GIS Resources for answers. Web links and resources provided here are illustrative rather than exhaustive and draw on the work of spatial@ucsb and affiliated programs whenever possible.
Visit the spatial@ucsb portal to Map Projections and Cartography for representing Earth in planar format
Distorted Maps a special presentation by Waldo Tobler that will interest persons curious about map projections
“Beyond-Ptolemy: Mercator and other Distorted Maps”
This file will download to your computer, Click here to download PowerPoint Viewer.
Virtual Globes also referred to as Geobrowsers or Earthbrowsers, are Internet-based 3D software engines that display geographic data models on a spherical representation of the Earth (or other planets).
Examples of Virtual Globes (require download and install of software):
- ArcGIS Explorer’ ESRI calls this “GIS for everyone” (free)
- ArcExplorer’ is ESRI’s GIS data viewer that lets you perform basic GIS functions. (free)
- Google Earth (free)
- Microsoft’s Bing Maps Interactive SDK formerly known as Microsoft’s Virtual Earth (free)
- NASA’s WorldWind A global browser that draws on data from NASA and other sources (free)
- TerraExplorer interactive 3D geo-visualization of the earth and selected cities
Virtual Globes and Volunteered Geographic Information–
See current spatial@ucsb research on VGI
Virtual Globes in the Classroom
Spatial Reasoning in Arts and Sciences
Spatial@ucsb recognizes the importance of spatial reasoning (both geographical and non-geographical) in the research and creative pursuits of scholars from across the humanities and sciences and seeks to assemble resources that make explicit the role of spatial thinking in a broad range of disciplines.
Course Syllabi
This page provides links to syllabi of courses taught by scholars from a variety of institutions across the country. They were assembled as illustrations of how spatial thinking, spatial analysis and GIS are taught in undergraduate programs. If you have a syllabus that illustrates classroom applications of spatial thinking in your discipline, spatial@ucsb would welcome the opportunity to include it on this page. Please submit these to Don Janelle.
