Overview

There is a growing realization that our expanding population and thirst for industrial and technological development directly threaten our environment. This awareness has emerged as the nations of the world have developed a global outlook; the earth was seen and photographed as a whole for the first time during the Apollo missions of the late 1960s; also there is increasing recogni.tion that the earth functions as a single system in which every living organism interacts with every other, and that ecological processes do not recognize geo-political boundaries. At the same time however, concern with our environment must be balanced against the need to provide food, housing, health care, education and employment for the growing populace. This conflict can only be resolved through careful management of the earth's resources. Management of natural resources implies knowledge regarding their state, distribution and dynamics. This in tum implies the active collection and recording of environmental data. In fact such data have been collected throughout history. From the earliest civilizations inventories, through field surveys, have been made concerning the spatial organization of the environment. These have then been translated, through the process of cartography, into maps; maps for navigation, for military use, for agriculturalists, maps of a general nature such as topographic maps, and thematic maps showing more specific themes such as land use.

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