Ecoinformatics Problems of Global Climate Change - New Ecoinformatics Tools in Environmental Science: Applications and Decision-making - page 464

by limitations of available data bases. The interaction of these causes leads to a
range of spatial scales, which provides an ef cient parameterization of the processes

of propagation of the atmospheric pollution and agrees with international standards.
At present, the GEODAS standard is the most widespread, it has nine levels of
spatial resolution from one degree to half-second in longitude and latitude. Seven
scales of cartographic presentation of data are provided (Table 5.21 ).
Data on these scales can be obtained by the synthesis of satellite data and data of
national monitoring systems. The latter are important because they specify the data
domain and select priorities characteristic of a given region. For instance, for
developed countries the operational assessments of air quality in the zones of
megapolises and large industrial enterprises, are of great importance. For devel-
oping countries, the control of trans-boundary transport of pollutants is of principal
importance as well as an assessment of possible change of atmospheric air in
connection with the building of industrial plants. The ratio of scales given in
Table 5.21 corresponds to a majority of situations of atmospheric monitoring.
Along with the problem of choosing the scales of spatial resolution, there is a
problem of their agreement with time scales. This problem is important for the
formation of the structure of numerical models which describe the pollutants

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dynamics in the atmosphere. According to preliminary estimates of the International
Geosphere-Biosphere Program, there is a scale of transitions in temporal and spatial
measurements between complexity and depth of the hierarchic structure of con-
nections considered in the model. So far, the developed models practically ignored
this fact, and therefore it was often impossible to apply them to the natural object
under study. An agreed discretization scale for natural phenomena to be used in
models, proposed by Nitu et al. (2000a, b, 2004), which enables one to classify the
natural phenomena with due account of their hierarchic subordination on temporal
and spatial scales. This classi cation is based on the fundamental understanding of

the hierarchy in the general theory of systems. According to this theory, the
behavior of any complicated system is determined by the triad of frequencies of its
variability, which provides an agreement between coherence and stability of the
system. This makes it possible to exclude from consideration unnecessary details in
the model s structure, by the prescribed time scale or to establish a minimum time

step from data on spatial scale. For instance, if in the model the time step is chosen
to be equal to 1 year, there is no sense in taking into account such processes as
atmospheric turbulence. In other words,

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in this case the atmosphere can be

Table 5.21 List of scales of cartographic information presentation characteristic of the developed
monitoring systems
Spatial resolution (km) Scale Spatial resolution Scale

0.5 × 0.5 1:1,250 40 × 40 1:50,000

1 × 1 1:2,500 250 × 250 1:250,000

5 × 5 1:10,000 500 × 500 1:625,000

10 × 20 1:25,000