Spatial is special: What about spatial statistics ?

‘Spatial variability’ and ‘spatial relationships’ are key terms for sensing, modelling and managing geographic reality in general and natural and human-influenced ecosystems in particular. Whereas geomatics technologies are developed to capture the spatially (and temporally) variable characteristics of geographic reality in functional databases, geographic information systems (GIS) are designed and implemented to reveal the spatial patterns and relationships at all scale levels and resolutions. Inevitably, the content of the spatial databases underpinning the GIS is affected by measurement error and uncertainty and so is the information derived from it through GIS-based spatial analysis and statistics. In this contribution we recall the principles of geomatics and GIS to deal with spatial variability, error and uncertainty and illustrate these principles through a number of cases related to the management of terrestrial ecosystems.status: publishe