Meanings of Scale

Right, Now all the pretty stuff is over (well...to be honest, there is more to come!) but anyway, when it comes to looking at Scale in Geography there are 3 main meanings to consider, they are:

Cartographic Scale; this refers to the depicted size of a feature on a map relative to its actual size in the world.

Analysis scale; this refers to the size of the unit at which some problem is analysed, such as at the county or state level.

Phenomenons Scale; this refers to the size at which human or physical earth structures or processese exist, regardless of how they are studied or represented.

Although the three referents of scale frequently are treated independently, they are in fact
interrelated in important ways that are relevant to all geographers and the focus of research or some. For example choices concerning the scale at which a map should be made depend in part on the scale at which measurements of earth features are made and the scale at which a phenomenon of interest actually exists


Issues of scale have always been central to geographic theory and research. Advances in the understanding of scale and the ability to investigate scale-related problems will continue, particularly with the increasingly common representation of geographic phenomena through the medium of digital geographic information (Goodchild and Proctor 1997)

References:
Goodchild M F, Proctor J (1997) Scale in a digital geographic world. Geographical and Environmental Modeling 1: 5-23