The Cartography and Spatial Representation Traditions at Penn State

It is impossible to specify with any precision when the "cartography program" originated at Penn State. From the department's start in 1945, Penn State geography has been rooted in maps and mapping. Maps have been viewed as both an integral part of the research process and the result of research, rather than simply as a summary of research findings. Recent work using spatial adaptive filtering combined with animated maps to identify and explain spatio-temporal processes in AIDs diffusion and development of a three-dimensional time series for exploring patterns of change in New York City following the introduction of the skyscraper, exemplify the cartographic analysis/visualization traditions at Penn State. The importance assigned to maps as a research contribution is also clear in the four major atlases based on original research that have been edited by faculty in the department, and the USAtias 2000 project recently proposed by Ron Abler. A common thread through the years at Penn State is a concern with the representation of space, not only cartographically, but mathematically, digitally, and cognitively. Rather than building a narrow program in cartography, we have concentrated on spatial representation in its many facets. While cartography serves as a unifying or organizing mechanism for linking varied attempts to grapple with spatial representation, the bounds at Penn State between cartography, geographic information systems (GIS), remote sensing, spatial analysis, cognitive mapping, and scientific visualization are indistinct, as are the divisions among spatial representation and other research specializations represented among our faculty. An active program exists to explore fundamental issues of spatial representation encountered when the environment is captured and transformed by maps, GIS, or the human mind, and to link that derived understanding to other geographic research problems.