空间数据坐标与投影.pptVIP

* mapscale.ppt Map scale An important, but often misunderstood concept in cartography, is that of map scale. In order to represent a portion of Earth’s surface on a map, the area must be reduced. The extent of this reduction is expressed as a ratio called map scale. The map scale is defined as the ratio of map distance to ground distance. For example, if we draw a 4.8 km road as a 20 cm line on our map, the following statements would describe the map scale: 20 cm : 4.8 km, 20 cm : 480,000 cm, 1 cm : 24,000 cm, 1 : 24,000 The latter is known as a representative fraction (RF) because the values on either side of the colon represent the proportion between distance on the map and distance on the ground; that is, “1:24,000” means “1 map inch represents 24,000 ground inches”, “1 map meter represents 24,000 ground meters”, or “1 map centimeter represents 24,000 ground centimeters”, and so on. Map scale can be expressed in several different manners: as a fraction (1:24,000), as a verbal statement (one centimeter equals one kilometer), or as a bar. Map scale indicates how much a given distance was reduced to be represented on a map. For the same size map, features on a small-scale map (1:1,000,000) will look smaller than those of a large-scale map (1:1,200). In other words, a dime-sized lake on a large scale map (l:1,200) would be less than the size of the period at the end of this sentence on a small-scale map (1:1,000,000). In general, small-scale maps depict large ground areas, but they have low spatial resolution, showing little detail. On the other hand, large-scale maps depict small ground areas, but have high spatial resolution, showing many details. The features on small-scale maps more closely represent real-world features because the extent of reduction is lower than that of a large-scale map. As map scale decreases, features must be smoothed and simplified or not shown at all. For example, at a scale of 1:63,360 (in which 1 inch = 1 mile), it is difficult to repre