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space-in-time perspective — English
The way in which geographers interpret the world we live in. Things on Earth vary from place to place (see “spatial distribution” and “spatial pattern”) and also from time to time at one and the same place. Geographers study the spatial patterns formed by the occurrence of people, phenomena and processes, but all of these change over time. So when we describe them, it is a description of where they occur at one specific time. In this way we have described spatial variation at a certain moment in time (time 1). However, geographers also study the changes in occurrence over time. Should we revisit a certain investigation a number of years later, we are again studying the spatial patterns, but now at time 2. Sometimes we might be more interested in the rate at which spatial patterns change, and then we do a longitudinal study, which means that we study the spatial occurrence patterns continuously or interrupted for a certain period. All spatial patterns on Earth change over time; that is what geographers are specifically trained to analyse.
