摘要：This paper develops a conceptual framework that can provide a scientific foundation forformulating policies that consider environmental and economic tradeoffs, such as the policyissues related to carbon sequestration in the Kyoto protocol. It addresses a critical problemrecognized in the environmental sciences, namely, choosing the appropriate spatial scale formeasurement and analysis of spatially variable economic and bio-physical processes. Theimportance of selecting an appropriate scale for analysis has been acknowledged in manydifferent sciences (for example, Sivapalan and Kalma; Turner et al.; Wu and Segerson; Aspinall)and has been identified as "one of the major impediments, both conceptually andmethodologically, to advancing all sciences that use geographic information" (NCGIA).
