Annals of GIS

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Spatial prediction based on Third Law of

Geography

A‐Xing Zhu, Guonian Lu, Jing Liu, Cheng‐Zhi Qin & Chenghu Zhou

To cite this article: A‐Xing Zhu, Guonian Lu, Jing Liu, Cheng‐Zhi Qin & Chenghu
Zhou (2018): Spatial prediction based on Third Law of Geography, Annals of GIS, DOI:
10.1080/19475683.2018.1534890

To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/19475683.2018.1534890

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Francis Group.

Published online: 19 Oct 2018.

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ANNALS OF GIS
https://doi.org/10.1080/19475683.2018.1534890

Spatial prediction based on Third Law of Geography

a,b,c,d,e
A-Xing Zhu , Guonian Lua,b,c, Jing Liuf, Cheng-Zhi Qin d
and Chenghu Zhoud
a
Jiangsu Center for Collaborative Innovation in Geographical Information Resource Development and Application, Nanjing, China; bKey
Laboratory of Virtual Geographic Environment of Ministry of Education, Nanjing Normal University, Nanjing, China; cSchool of Geography,
Nanjing Normal University, Nanjing, China; dState Key Laboratory of Resources and Environmental Information System, Institute of
Geographic Sciences and Natural Resources Research, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China; eDepartment of Geography, University
of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, WI USA; fEarth Science Department, Santa Monica College, Santa Monica, CA, USA

ABSTRACT ARTICLE HISTORY

Current methods of spatial prediction are based on either the First Law of Geography or the Received 1 October 2018
statistical principle or the combination of these two. The Second Law of Geography contributes Accepted 8 October 2018
to the revision of these methods so they are adaptive to local conditions but at the cost of KEYWORDS
increasing demand for samples. This paper presents a new thinking about spatial prediction First Law of Geography;
based on the Third Law of Geography which focuses on the similarity of geographic configuration Second Law of Geography;
of locations. Under the Third Law of Geography, spatial prediction can be made on the basis of Third Law of Geography;
the similarity of geographic configurations between a sample and a prediction point. This allows spatial prediction; spatial
the representativeness of a single sample to be used in prediction. A case study in predicting interpolation; Kriging; soil
spatial variation of soil organic matter content was used to compare the spatial prediction based mapping; geographic
the Third Law of Geography with those based on the First Law and the statistical principle. It is configuration
concluded that spatial prediction based on the Third Law of Geography does not require samples
to be over certain size nor to be of a particular spatial distribution to achieve a high quality
prediction. The prediction uncertainty associated with spatial prediction based on the Third Law
of Geography is more indicative to quality of the prediction, thus more effective in allocating
error reduction efforts. These properties make spatial prediction based on the Third Law of
Geography more suitable for prediction over large and complex geographic areas.

1. Introduction which are unknown at these locations or other locations

(referred to as prediction points). Spatial prediction is
Information on the spatial variation (spatial data) of geo-
typically done in the process as shown in Figure 1. First,
graphic variables (phenomena) (such as vegetation, soils,
a set of discrete samples are collected over the area of
habitat suitability, and hazard susceptibility) is essential
interest. Second, information collected at these samples
for geographic modelling and management decision
are then analyzed to derive relationships describing how
making at local, regional, and global scales (Goodchild,
the values of the target variable is related to the informa-
Parks, and Steyaert 1993; Goodchild, Steyeart, and Parks
tion collected at these samples. Finally, these relationships
1996; Miller and White 1998; Van Westen, Castellanos, and
are used to predict the values of the target variable at
Kuriakose 2008). Obtaining spatial data is a key research
prediction points. The key to the success and applicability
area in geography, particularly in the field of geographic
of spatial prediction are the underlying assumptions
information science (Tomlinson, Calkins, and Marble 1976;
employed in describing the relationships and the way in
Goodchild 2004a; Cruden 2017). Spatial prediction (some-
which how these relationships are characterized.
times also referred to as spatial interpolation, predictive
This paper first examines how the basic principles,
mapping) is one of the major approaches for achieving
specifically the First and Second Laws of Geography as
that, particularly for variables, such as soil conditions,
referred to by some scholars (Tobler 1970; Goodchild
habitat suitability, hazards susceptibility, for which other
2004b) and the statistic principle, are used to provide
methods such as remote sensing are ineffective in obtain-
the underlying assumptions for describing and charac-
ing satisfactory results (Skidmore 2003).
terizing the relationships used in spatial prediction and
The basic idea of spatial prediction is to use what we
the limitations in applying these principles to spatial
have already known at locations to estimate the values of
prediction. The paper will then present another widely
a geographic variable (referred to as the target variable)

CONTACT A-Xing Zhu azhu@wisc.edu Department of Geography, University of Wisconsin-Madison; Guonian Lv gnlu@njnu.edu.cn School of
Geography, Nanjing Normal University; Jing Liu liu_jing@smc.edu Earth Science Department, Santa Monica College
© 2018 The Authors(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/),
which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, and is not altered, transformed, or built upon in any way.
2 A. ZHU ET AL.

Figure 1. Derivation of relationships from samples for spatial prediction.

known and commonly used principle of geography,
one may refer to it as the Third law of Geography,
under the context of addressing issues faced with the
other principles in spatial prediction. The utility of Third
Law of Geography is illustrated through the develop-
ment and application of a completely new approach in
spatial prediction for soil mapping.
2. Existing principles in spatial prediction and
their limitations
The key issues in spatial prediction are the underlying
assumptions used to describe the relationships and the
way how the relationships are characterized. There are
spatial prediction is to design a mean to capture and
represent this property of spatial variation. We use the
ordinary Kriging method as an example to illustrate
how this important property is represented and used
in spatial prediction as well as the requirements asso-
ciated with such use of this principle (Figure 2).
Like any other spatial prediction techniques which
are based on the First of Geography, the key issue the
Kriging method needs to solve is how to allocate the
weights to nearby samples for estimating the value of
the target variable at a prediction point. The Kriging
method determines the weight allocation by minimiz-
ing the error variance model as shown in Equation 1.
X
n0 X
n0

three basic principles, namely the First Law of Geography, ~R2 ¼ σ

σ ~2 þ ~2  ~γij Þ
wi wj ð σ
i¼1 j¼1
statistical principle and the Second Law of Geography,
X
n0
used in spatial predictions as described below. 2 ~2  ~γi0 Þ
w i ðσ (1)
i¼1
Xn0
2.1. The First Law of Geography for spatial þ 2μð wi  1Þ
i¼1
prediction
Where
The first principle used in spatial prediction is that attribute
~R2 is the error variance for the prediction point and is
σ
values of a target variable are spatially related (spatial
to be minimized, σ ~ 2 is the sill of the semivariogram, wi
autocorrelation) and that locations which are closer
and wj are the weights assigned to sample i and sample
would have more similarity values of attributes than loca-
j, n0 is the number of samples involved for predicting the
tions are further apart. Danie Krige is among the first to use
value at prediction point 0, μ is the Lagrange parameter
this principle for spatial prediction in his effort to plot the
(dummy variable), ~γij is the semivariance for the distance
gold grades over space (Krige 1951). Matheron (1963) later
developed the theoretical basis for the method which led between sample i and sample j which is computed from
to a much celebrated family of methods, now referred to as the semivariogram model given the distance between
the Kriging methods. Other spatial prediction techniques sample i and sample j. Similarly, ~γi0 is the semivariance
based on this principle include nearest neighbours, moving for the distance between sample i and the prediction
average (local sample mean), and inverse distance point 0. Once determined, the weights will be used in a
weighted (IDW) (Isaaks and Srivastava 1989; Goovaerts weighted average function (Equation 2) together with
1999). Tobler, in his 1970 paper, stated this important the attribute values at the sample points involved to
geographic principle as the First Law of Geography estimate attribute value at the prediction point 0.
through his famous statement ‘Everything is related to X
n0

everything else, but near things are more related than Z^0 ¼ wi  zi (2)
i¼1
distant things’ (Tobler 1970).
The First Law of Geography states an important Where
property of geographic variation (spatial variation). Z^0 is the attribute value to be predicted at the predic-
The key issue in using this important property for tion point 0, Zi is the attribute value at sample point i, wi is
 ANNALS OF GIS 3

Figure 2. An illustration of the use of the First Law of Geography in ordinary Kriging and the limitations of such use. Samples are
used to define how the semivariance changes with respect to distance between pair of points to create a semivariogram, to which a
semivariogram model is fitted. The semivariogram model is then used to compute the semivariances (~γij and ~γi0 ) needed in the
process of minimizing the objective function to determine the weights which will be assigned to the sample points nearby to
compute the attribute value (Z^0 ) at prediction point 0.

the weight assigned to sample point i (summed up to 1),
n0 is the total number of samples involved in the predic-
tion of the attribute value at prediction point 0.
Clearly, the predicted value is dependent on the
weight (wi) assigned to each sample point involved
given that Zi and n0 are fixed. If the weight assigned to a
sample represents the spatial relationship between this
sample point and the prediction point well, then the
predicted value would be a good approximation of the
real value at the site 0. This is conditioned on the fact that
the computed semivariances between sample points (~γij )
and that between a sample and the prediction point (~γi0 )
from the semivariogram model are good representations
of the actual differences in attribute values between these
points. This in turn depends on how well the semivario-
gram model represents the spatial autocorrelation that
exists in the study area. If it does not, then the computed
semivariances are not a good representation of the reality,
and in turn the weights assigned to the sample points
cannot capture the relationships between the prediction
point and the sample points. Certainly, the predicted
value will not be a good approximation of the reality at
the prediction point.
From what has been presented above, we can con-
clude that in order for the Kriging method to work the
semivariogram model must meet the requirement
referred to as the stationarity assumption in addition
to the need of sufficient samples to derive it. This
assumption states that the semivariance (or the differ-
ence in attribute) between a pair of points only
depends on distance between the two points, and it
does not change with the orientation of the two points
given the distance separating them is fixed, and does
not change with the locations of the two points as long
as their distance does not change. It is fair to say that
the Kriging method requires two conditions: sufficient
samples to derive the semivariogram model to describe
the spatial autocorrelation of the area and the statio-
narity of the semivariogram model (which can be stated
plainly that the spatial autocorrelation does not change
over space). To some extent these two requirements
are also needed for other spatial prediction techniques
based on the First of Law of Geography (such as IDW).
2.2. The statistical principle for spatial prediction
Another principle used in spatial prediction is the statis-
tical principle. Here, we use this term to refer to the
statistic correlation between variables as expressed
through regression analysis and to distinguish this from
the geostatistical methods (such as Kriging described
above). The principle assumes that there is a relationship
4 A. ZHU ET AL.
between the value of the target variable (dependent
variable) and the values from other variables (indepen-
dent variables), and this relationship can be used to
predict the value of the target variable at a prediction
point. In this paper, we refer to the independent vari-
ables as environmental covariates (or simply covariates)
and the relationship between the target variables and
the covariates as covariate relationships. With the rapid
development of remote sensing and geographic infor-
mation processing techniques, vast amount of data on
our physical and social environment have been collected
and accumulated (Eldawy and Mokbel 2015). This
increasing availability of data made this statistical princi-
ple not only possible but also viable to be deployed in
spatial prediction. The recent development and the avail-
ability of machine learning techniques (such as decision
trees, random forests, neural networks) have attracted
further attention to spatial prediction based on this prin-
ciple (Kanevski, Timonin, and Pozdnukhov 2009; Li et al.
2011; Ließ, Glaser, and Huwe 2012).
The key issue in using the statistical principle in
spatial prediction is how to characterize the relationship
between the target variable and its covariates. The
techniques based on this principle are in common as
to how they extract the relationships and how they
apply the extracted relationship to prediction. For
Figure 3. Illustration of the statistical principle used in spatial prediction and its requirements. Samples are used to extract the
relationship (f) between the target variable and a set of environmental covariates (x). The relationship is then applied together with
the values of the covariates at each location to predict the value of the target variable at this location.
simplicity, we use the linear regression method as an
example to illustrate how the statistical principle is used
in spatial prediction as well as the requirements asso-
ciated with such use of this principle (Figure 3).
As one can see, the predicted value is dependent on
f given that the values from a set of covariates are fixed.
As in the spatial prediction based on the First Law of
Geography, the requirements for spatial prediction
based on the statistical principle are similar: 1) sufficient
samples to extract the relationships and 2) the
extracted relationship to be stable over the entire
study area (which is similar to the stationarity assump-
tion of the Kriging method).
2.3. The Second Law of Geography for spatial
prediction
Obviously, the stationarity assumption of spatial auto-
correlation and the static requirement of the extracted
covariate relationship, collectively referred to as the
stationarity assumption, often cannot be met because
of the nature of geographic phenomena. It is difficult to
imagine that these relationships (spatial or covariate)
will hold static or stay the same over space considering
the geographic phenomena are inherently heteroge-
neous. This is particularly true for large and complex

geographic areas. Spatial heterogeneity of geographic
phenomena has been one of the major subjects of
geographic studies (Hartshorne 1939; Hartshorne 1959;
Harvey 1996; Fotheringham and Brunsdon 1999; Phillips
2003; Anselin 2013). This heterogeneous nature of geo-
graphic phenomena has recently been referred to as
the Second Law of Geography by Goodchild (2004b).
In recognition of what captured by the Second Law of
Geography, techniques for spatial prediction have been
substantially revised to account for spatial heterogeneity
and to make them adaptive to local conditions. The various
revisions made were to limit the spatial extent over which
the extracted relationship is applied. For example, the
Kriging method discussed above has been extended to
many versions to account for various aspects of spatial
heterogeneity. Kriging with locally varying sills was devel-
oped to adjust the extracted spatial autocorrelation to fit
different areas in hope to meet the stationarity assumption
(Isaaks and Srivastava 1989). Kriging within classes was
designed to limit the application to the same class of
geographic feature over the area so that spatial heteroge-
neity can be minimized (Cressie 1991). The Box-Cox Kriging
was developed to constrain the spatial extent over
which the extracted spatial autocorrelation is applied
(Kitanidis and Shen 1996). Directional Kriging was devel-
oped to account for variation in spatial autocorrelation in
different directions (Wingle and Poeter 1998). On the spa-
tial prediction based on covariate relationship, geographic
weighted regression, which has received much attention
lately, forces the regression to be built and applied over
local areas specified by a bandwidth (Brunsdon,
Fotheringham, and Charlton 1996; Fotheringham,
Brunsdon, and Charlton 2002).
2.4. The challenges of the existing spatial
prediction techniques
From the above discussion we can summarize that the
spatial prediction techniques based on the First Law of
Geography or the statistical principle have two key
requirements: sufficient samples for effectively character-
izing the relationship and the stationarity of the
extracted relationship over the entire study area. The
techniques based on the combination of these two prin-
ciples, such as co-Kriging (Stein and Corsten 1991),
regression-Kriging and its variants (Odeh, McBratney,
and Chittleborough 1995; Hengl, Heuvelink, and Stein
2004), have the same requirements. Although what cap-
tured in the Second Law of Geography made the corre-
sponding spatial prediction techniques be localized to
avoid the violation of the stationarity assumption, this
localization does not remove the stationarity assumption
from those techniques, actually demands much more
ANNALS OF GIS 5
samples so that the local versions of relationships (spatial
or covariate) can be derived. It is fair to say that the
following requirements are associated with the current
principles and their uses in spatial prediction: 1) large
sample set; 2) stationarity assumption; 3) small geo-
graphic areas.
These requirements or limitations might not present a
serious problem if spatial prediction is only applied to
generate spatial variation of geographic variables over
some limited areal coverage and that there are substantial
number of samples available for the area of interest and the
relationships are reasonably stable over that area. It clearly
would be a problem for spatial prediction to be applied
over large areas with complex geographic processes, which
are more than often with the increase of geographic area.
This is because on one hand applying the spatial prediction
techniques without these modifications to accommodate
what captured by the Second Law of Geography would
certainly violate the stationarity assumption of these tech-
niques. On the other hand, it is prohibitively expensive to
collect samples at the level of density and at the spatial
distribution needed for the spatial prediction techniques
revised under the Second Law of Geography. One might
suggest that the recent increase of data collected through
citizen science (Sui, Elwood, and Goodchild 2012) or volun-
teered geographic information (Goodchild 2007;
Goodchild and Glennon 2010; Haklay 2013) would provide
a viable sources of samples needed. However, samples
from these sources are often ad-hoc in nature (Zhu et al.
2015a) and often do not meet the requirements imposed
on the samples by these techniques. Unfortunately, when
the samples do not conform to the requirements, these
techniques have little ability to report the uncertainty in the
results due to the failure to meet the sample requirement.
The key issue in leading to the failure in spatial predic-
tion over large area is that the existing principles and their
application in spatial prediction is to extract an ‘average’
relationship from a collection of samples and apply this
‘average’ relationship to the entire area (small or large). For
example, in the Kriging method the semivariogram model
describes the ‘average’ condition of spatial autocorrelation
in the sample set. By ‘average’ we first mean that the
semivariance computed for each lag is an average of the
squared differences in attribute for pair of points separated
at this distance as shown in Equation 3.
1 XNðhÞ
γðhÞ ¼ ðzj  zi Þ2 (3)
2NðhÞ ði;jÞjd ¼h
ij
Where
h is the distance between two points (a pair of
points), referred to as lag, γ(h) is the semi-variance in
attribute for pairs with h distance apart, N(h) is the
6 A. ZHU ET AL.
number of pairs of points with h distance apart. Zi is the
attribute value at point i, and (i,j)|dij = h denotes all the
pairs of points which are separated by h distance.
Clearly, γ(h) is an average value of the semivariance
for pairs of points separated by h distance. This means
that it is very possible, even more likely, that the spe-
cific semivariance between a given pair of points can be
larger or smaller than this average value or can even be
quite larger or smaller which makes the average value
less representative.
The second aspect in our use of ‘average’ is that
when the semivariogram model is fitted onto these
‘average’ semivariances at each lag, the model does
not fit through these points of semivariances exactly.
In all cases, the fitted model runs through the sets of
points by minimizing the deviation from these points
(Figure 2). This is another level of ‘averaging’. It is fair to
say that the semivariances computed from the semivar-
iogram model and used in the optimization of the error
variance model (Equation 1) are the values from an
average semivariogram model, which is fitted to a set
of average semivariances.
Using the semivariances averaged in such ways to
approximate the varying values of semivariance for
pairs of points separated by h distance makes what
expressed in the semivariogram model about spatial
autocorrelation deviate from what existed in the
sample set, which is another level of approximation
of the spatial autocorrelation existed in the study
area. So the spatial autocorrelation used in deriving
the weight assigned to each sample point can be
quite different from the spatial autocorrelation
existed in the study area. For large areas or areas
with high geographic complexity, this difference can
be significant. The analysis on ‘averaging’ in the
Kriging method can also be applied to other spatial
prediction techniques based on spatial autocorrela-
tion as well as those based on the statistical princi-
ple. This averaging not only introduces errors in the
prediction but also makes these techniques unable
to capture details of spatial variation properly.
Recent trends in geographic analysis have seen
that the level of spatial details on spatial information
has dramatically increased in addition to the
increase of spatial extent of geographic analysis
(Anselin 2013). This demands the spatial information
to drive the analysis to be at a fine spatial resolution
and over large areas. Furthermore, current geo-
graphic modelling in support of decision making
demands uncertainty assessment about model
results, which calls for uncertainty measures about
the spatial information of the input geographic vari-
ables (Hunsaker et al. 2013; Shi 2008). Clearly, the
existing spatial prediction techniques as shown
through the above analysis fell short to meet these
needs of emerging geographic analysis.
3. The Third Law of Geography and spatial
prediction
3.1. The Third Law of Geography
In geographic analysis we more than often see studies
that use similarity in geographic environment as con-
stituted by a set of geographic variables at locations or
areas to assess the similarity of other geographic vari-
ables or activities at other locations or areas. For exam-
ple, in crime analysis, scholars often studied the
geographic environment (configuration of geographic
variables such as income, education, social amenities)
over the areas where crime occurrences are high and
apply the set of conditions derived to see what other
areas which would be more likely to have this type of
crimes (Wortley and Townsley 2016). In soil science,
pedologists studied the formation of soils under certain
geographic environment (the configuration of geo-
graphic variables such as climate, geology, topography,
vegetation, and time) over some areas and then
expected the similar soil formation processes to occur
at other locations or areas with similar geographic
environment (Dokuchaev 1883; Jenny 1994).
The above examples as well as other similar studies
manifest another important geographic principle which
has important implication for spatial prediction. We sum-
marize this geographic principle as ‘The more similar geo-
graphic configurations of two points (areas), the more
similar the values (processes) of the target variable at
these two points (areas)’. One may regard this as ‘the
Third Law of Geography’. The significance expressed in
this statement are in the following two aspects. The first
is its comparative nature. It examines the similarity of the
geographic configurations of two locations and then links
this similarity with the similarity of the values (the pro-
cesses) of the target variable at these locations. It does
not call for an explicit relationship (e.g. a mathematical
model) between the geographic configuration and the
value of the target variable to be established, which is
significantly different from the statistical principle dis-
cussed earlier (more on this in the discussion section later).
The second aspect is the term ‘geographic configura-
tion’ which means the makeup and the structure of geo-
graphic variables over some spatial neighbourhood
around a point. It has three elements. The first element
is the list of geographic variables or a set of covariates
defining the geographic configuration for a given target
variable. The set of geographic variables may be different

for different target variables under concern. For example,
if the target variable is soil organic content of top soil
horizon, one may need to include climate variables (about
temperature and moisture), geological variables (about
parent materials), topography (redistribution of energy
and matters), vegetation (about organism) and time
(duration of interaction) if possible. If the target variable
is crime occurrence, then the set of variables (covariates)
associated with crime should be used to construct the
geographic configuration. The second element in this
geographic configuration is the spatial scale or the spatial
granularity (the foot print or neighbourhood) over which
geographic processes will manifest themselves. For exam-
ple, the formation of soil requires some spatial extent for
the soil formation processes to interact. Clearly, different
target variables would have different spatial granularity.
The third element is the hierarchy of geographic variables.
In the example of soil formation, we would consider the
climatic conditions to be the higher hierarchy because it
controls energy and matter at much more important level
than topography. Thus the evaluation of similarity in geo-
graphic configuration needs to consider these two
aspects: the comparative nature and the geographic
configuration.
3.2. Its implication for spatial prediction
The Third Law of Geography provides a very different
perspective on spatial prediction. Its comparative nature
calls for prediction based on comparison of a sample point
and a prediction point, rather than based on explicit rela-
tionships derived from an entire set of samples. Under this
Law, we can use the representation of a single sample
point, rather than the representation of an entire sample
set which unavoidably is the average. The representative-
ness of a single sample can be expressed as shown in
Figure 4. Under the notation of the Third Law of
Figure 4. The representativeness of a single sample to a location of prediction can be quantified by the similarity between the
geographic configurations of these two points.
ANNALS OF GIS 7
Geography, a sample point k in geographic space can be
transform into the geographic configuration space as con-
structed by the covariates of the target variable (referred as
the covariate space). The representativeness of sample k to
other points can be quantified by the similarity of these
points to sample k in this covariate space.
The basic idea in spatial prediction using the Third Law
of Geography is illustrated in Figure 5. The similarity in
geographic configuration between sample point k and
prediction point i is first to be computed and used as the
representativeness of sample k to prediction point i. This
similarity is then used as the weight in the prediction of the
value of the target variable at prediction point i, together
with the other involved sample points whose weights are
determined similarly. This similarity together with the simi-
larity of other sample points are also used to measure the
uncertainty associated with the prediction using the sam-
ples involved. This way of spatial prediction does not
require the samples to be of specific size, nor does it require
the samples to be distributed in specific patterns.
4. Case study
We here use soil property mapping as a case study to
illustrate the application of the Third Law of Geography to
spatial prediction. The emphasis here is on how spatial
prediction based on the Third Law of Geography differs
from that based on the other principles discussed in
Section 2. It is not the intent of this case study to examine
the various aspects of the Third Law when applied to spatial
prediction.
4.1. Study area and datasets
As a case of illustration, the study area is about 60 km2 in
size, located in Heshan farm, Nenjiang County, Heilongjiang
Province of China (Figure 6). The climate condition in the
8 A. ZHU ET AL.

Figure 5. Spatial prediction based on the Third Law of Geography. The similarity in geographic configuration between sample point
k and prediction point i can be used as the representativeness of sample k to prediction point i and is used as weight in the
prediction of the value of the target variable at prediction point i. This similarity is also used in measuring the uncertainty associated
with the prediction.

study area is quite homogeneous over the study area:
annual temperature ranges from −38 °C to 36 °C and the
average annual precipitation is 500–600 mm. Most soils in
the area were formed on deposits of silt loam loess with
exception in the valley, where the parent material is fluvial
deposits from up slopes. Elevation within the area ranges
from 270 m to 360 m with slope gradient generally under
4°. The study area has been cultivated as cropland for over
40 years. Soybean and wheat are the main agricultural
products. The soils over this area generally have a thick
top-layer with naturally high organic matter content.
Thus, little organic fertilizers are required to maintain a
high productivity.
In order to see the effectiveness of spatial prediction
based on the Third Law of Geography in term of low
sample requirement, 10 soil samples were collected
along a transect line crossing two side slopes (Figure 7).
The locations of those samples were subjectively

Figure 6. Location of study area.

 ANNALS OF GIS 9

Figure 7. A 3D-view of the sample locations. The red dots are

sample locations (Extracted from Zhu et al., 2015a).

determined by soil surveyors to reveal the soil variation

along a topo-sequence. Notice that the ridge areas and
wide valley areas were not sampled. It is highly unlikely Figure 8. Locations of evaluation samples collected through
regular sampling.
that those 10 soil samples can sufficiently represent the
soil–environment relationships as well as the spatial auto-
correlation of soil attributes in the entire study area. This 4.2. Methods of spatial predictions and evaluation
provides an excellent example to illustrate the flexibility
In this illustration, three methods of spatial prediction
and applicability of spatial prediction based on the Third
are used to generate the spatial variation of SOM (%).
Law of Geography. To evaluate the results from spatial
The first is the individual sample based predictive soil
prediction based on the Third Law of Geography and
mapping method (iPSM), which is based on the Third
those from spatial prediction based on the other princi-
Law of geography (Zhu et al. 2015a). The details of this
ples, 44 evaluation samples were independently collected
approach and its implementation of the Third Law of
on an 1100 m by 740 m grid (Figure 8).
Geography are beyond the scope of this discussion and
The targeted soil property to be predicted is soil
interested readers are directed to Zhu et al. (2015a) for
organic matter (SOM) content (%) in top layer. Since
further reading. The following covariates: elevation,
the study area is fairly homogeneous in terms of macro-
slope gradient, planform curvature, profile curvature,
climate, parent materials and vegetation conditions,
relative position index and TWI, were used to construct
thus six topographic covariates (elevation, slope gradi-
the geographic configuration for each location
ent, planform curvature, profile curvature, relative posi-
(whether sample point or prediction point). No spatial
tion index and topographic wetness index (TWI))
structure, nor hierarchy of variables will be used here
related to SOM content in the study area were used
for the simplicity of illustration. The prediction process
as covariates to characterize the geographic configura-
of iPSM is as shown in Figure 5 and the similarity
tion. The micro-variation of other environmental condi-
between a prediction point and sample point was cal-
tions can be well represented by the topographic
culated using Equation 4 shown below (Zhu et al.
conditions (Zhu et al. 2008). It is noted here that the
2015a). For each location, a SOM value and an uncer-
conditions of these covariates at a site constitute the
tainty value were computed.
geographic configuration for the site.
A 10 m resolution DEM created from the 1:10,000 v¼1
topographic map of the area using the TOPOGRID and S0;k ¼ P ðEv ðev;0 ; ev;k ÞÞ (4)
m
TINLATTICE in Arc/Info (Yang et al. 2007) was used to
generate the slope gradient, contour curvature and where S0,k represents the similarity between an predic-
profile curvature through 3DMapper (solim.geography. tion point (0) and a soil sample k; ev,0 and ev,k are the
wisc.edu). TWI was calculated using the method pro- values of the v-th covariate at point (0) and at soil
posed by Qin et al. (2011). sample k, respectively; m is the number of selected
10 A. ZHU ET AL.
covariates. Operator Ev is the function evaluating simi-
larity between prediction point (0) and sample k based
on v-th covariate and Operator P is the function which
integrates the similarities based on individual covariates
to create a final similarity between the two locations.
The second method is the multiple linear regression
(MLR) representing the statistical principle. The inde-
pendent variables are as the same as those listed for
the iPSM method. A stepwise linear regression was used
to avoid multi-collinearity among the six environmental
covariates. The regression coefficients were estimated
by Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) method using the 10
soil samples along the transect line. Only TWI and plan-
form curvature were selected as predictors through
stepwise analysis. The obtained regression was then
applied to every location across the study area to com-
pute the SOM value. No uncertainty value was pro-
duced with this method.
The third method is regression Kriging (RK) which
represents the combination of the statistical principle
and the First Law of Geography. RK is a widely used
technique for spatial prediction due to its ability to
utilize both the spatial relationship and the covariate
relationship(s) (Hengl, Heuvelink, and Stein 2004). In
this case study, the regression component of RK was
that constructed for the MLR method as described
above. The regression residuals at the 10 sample points
on the transect were then used to construct a
Figure 9. Predicted top-layer SOM content (%) using (a) iPSM and (b) RK.
semivariogram to describe the spatial autocorrelation
of the residuals and used in the Kriging component
(e.g. ordinary Kriging) of RK. The regression component
and the Kriging component are added together as the
final RK model (Hengl, Heuvelink, and Rossiter 2007).
For this model both the SOM value and the error var-
iance for each location were computed. The error var-
iance was regarded as the prediction uncertainty at
each location.
Evaluation of the three methods was conducted in
two aspects. First, the predication accuracy for each of
the methods at the 44 evaluation points was calculated
using the measures of Root Mean Squared Error (RMSE)
and mean absolute error (MAE). The methods were
compared on these two accuracy measures. The second
aspect is the utility of prediction uncertainty, which
only produced by iPSM and RK, in relation to prediction
residuals at the 44 evaluation points. A positive rela-
tionship was expected if the prediction uncertainty was
indicative of the prediction accuracy (i.e. the higher the
prediction uncertainty, the higher prediction residual).
4.3. Prediction results
Figure 9(a) shows the predicted SOM content (%) map
by iPSM, in which the predicted values range from
2.33% to 11.76%. Comparatively, Figure 9(b) shows
the predicted SOM map by RK, in which, the predicted

values of SOM content range from −40.89% to 25.98%.
The unreasonable negative predicted values were
assigned to ridges and valleys, which are the land-
scapes that cannot be represented by the 10 soil sam-
ples. On the predicted SOM content (%) map by iPSM
(Figure 9(a)), the upper-to-middle steep slopes were
assigned relatively low SOM content values while the
lower-to-toe gentle slopes were assigned relatively high
SOM content values. This spatial distribution pattern
matches the knowledge on how slope position and
slope gradient influence SOM content: on upper-to-
middle steep slopes erosional processes tend to be
the dominant processes which reduce the SOM content
in the top soil layer; on lower-to-toe gentle slopes
depositional processes tend to be the dominant pro-
cesses which usually leads to higher SOM content in the
top soil layer. In contrast, on the SOM content (%) map
predicted by RK (Figure 9(b)), the values of SOM con-
tent at different slope positions with different slope
gradient (e.g. upper-to-middle steep slope and lower
to toe gentle slope) could not be well differentiated.
This was mainly due to the fact that relative position
Table 1. Prediction accuracy of iPSM, RK and MLR methods.
Method RMSE MAE
iPSM 1.195 1.009
RK 6.095 3.012
MLR 6.096 3.012
(a)
Figure 10. Prediction uncertainty produced by (a) iPSM and (b) RK.
ANNALS OF GIS 11
index and slope gradient were not selected as predic-
tors in the stepwise linear regression in the construction
of the RK model.
The prediction accuracies evaluated by 44 validation
samples are listed in Table 1. Both the RMSE (6.095) and
MAE (3.012) of RK are higher than those of iPSM (1.195
RMSE and 1.009 MAE). It is clear that the 10 sample
points on a transect do not meet the requirement on
sample size and sample distribution by the Kriging
method and it is expected that the Kriging component
of RK contributed little to the improvement of predic-
tion accuracy. This is supported by the fact that there is
no difference in RMSE and the MAE between RK and
the MLR (Table 1).
The prediction uncertainty using the iPSM method is
shown in Figure 10(a). Since the 10 soil samples are
mainly located on side slopes (Figure 7) and can repre-
sent those areas well, the prediction uncertainty is gen-
erally low in those areas. In contrast, high prediction
uncertainty values were assigned to ridges and valleys
because the 10 soil samples cannot represent those
areas. Figure 10(b) shows the variance of errors com-
puted in RK (i.e. RK variance), which is commonly used
as a measurement of prediction uncertainty (Hengl,
Heuvelink, and Stein 2004).
The values of prediction uncertainty estimated from
iPSM at the 44 validation sample locations were plotted
against the corresponding prediction residuals in
Figure 11. The dashed regression line with the
(b)
12 A. ZHU ET AL.
Figure 11. The relationship between prediction uncertainty and prediction residual produced by iPSM.
correlation coefficient r (0.546) and the p-value of slope
(0.000151) indicates a positive relationship between
prediction uncertainty and prediction residual pro-
duced by iPSM. This implies that the prediction uncer-
tainty estimated by iPSM can be used as an indicator to
its prediction accuracy at each unvisited location.
The values of variance of errors estimated by RK at the
44 validation sample locations were plotted against the
corresponding prediction residuals in Figure 12(a).
Though a strong positive relationship was found
(r = 0.931, p-value of slope <2e−16), it is mainly due to
the two outlier points with extremely large RK variance and
prediction residual. The majority of scatter plots did not
show a very significant positive relationship. The removal of
the two outliers resulted in the scatter plot in Figure 12(b)
with r = 0.387 but the p-value of slope = 0.015. The results
suggested that the prediction uncertainty estimated by the
iPSM method was more effective in indicating prediction
accuracy than that by the RK method.
4.4. Observations
In the comparison between iPSM, which is based the Third
Law of Geography, and RK, which is based the combina-
tion of First Law and the statistical principle, it might
appear to be unfair to use RK with only 10 soil samples
along a transect line, knowingly that these samples are
not sufficient to construct the linear regression and the
semivariogram. However, this is exactly the scenario why
spatial prediction methods based on the Third Law of
Geography are needed. This demonstrates that spatial
prediction based on the Third Law is free of specific
requirement on sample size and sample distribution,
which make the existing samples collected in various
ways possible to be used effectively in spatial prediction.
This flexibility makes the spatial prediction based on the
Third Law of Geography more suitable for large areas
where a single and comprehensive sample set would be
difficult to be collected at once but multiple, partial sam-
ple sets collected by different parties for different pur-
poses are often available. In addition, samples collected
through citizen science projects and provided through
VGI can now be effectively used in spatial prediction
under the Third Law of Geography.
It is also important to observe that the prediction uncer-
tainty from iPSM is more informative than that of the RK.
The improved ability of prediction uncertainty in relation to
the quality of results from spatial prediction is a great asset
since it offers an informative guidance as to where to
sample to improve the prediction quality. This improved
ability also helps to improve the effectiveness of uncertainty
assessment (or sensitivity analysis) in geographic modeling.
5. Discussion
5.1. An invitation
This paper presents the idea of the Third Law of
Geography and its implication for spatial prediction. A
complete treatment on these two topics is almost
impossible given the space available. However, our
efforts here are to outline the essence of the Third
Law of Geography, and how this essence changes the
way spatial prediction can be conducted. Under this
notion, Section 3 was devoted to present this essence
and the theoretical basis for the shift in spatial predic-
tion. The case study presented in Section 4 was to
illustrate through an example how spatial prediction
can be conducted based on the Third Law of
Geography and to show the important differences in

Figure 12. The relationship between RK variance and RK prediction residual: (a) using all 44 validation samples, (b) using the
validation samples without the two outliers in (a).
the use of samples between spatial prediction based on
the Third Law of Geography and that based on the
other principles. This case study is not here to validate
the various impacts the Third Law of Geography could
bring to spatial prediction, nor was it designed to com-
pare and contrast the many differences between spatial
predictions using the Third Law of Geography and
other geographic principles (such as the First Law and
the Second Law of Geography). These validations, com-
parisons and contrasts deserve separate and detailed
treatments through additional studies. Thus, we use
ANNALS OF GIS 13
this paper as an invitation to explore the impacts of
this important geographic principle in spatial prediction
and in other geographic analysis.
5.2. The differences from the statistical principle
used in spatial prediction
One may suggest that the Third Law of Geography is
almost the same as the statistical principle used in
spatial prediction. The differences between the two
may not appear as apparently as one hopes at the
14 A. ZHU ET AL.
beginning but the differences are significant. The first
difference is that the Third Law of Geography calls for
the comparison of geographic configurations at two
locations. It does not relate the target variable to the
set of covariates directly, nor does it demand an explicit
relationship to be defined, but the statistical principle
does. The second difference is that the Third Law sti-
pulates the configuration of geographic conditions in
examining the similarity of geographic environment at
two points. This configuration contains the structure of
the variables, not only the order of importance but also
the combination effects of different variables in deter-
mining the value of target variable. The third difference
is the spatial structure in comparison of the geographic
configurations. It calls for the geographic conditions
over certain size of areas to be included in this compar-
ison which could be considered in the statistical princi-
ple when applied to spatial prediction but it more than
often is not.
5.3. Differences from the First Law and the Second
Law of Geography
The three laws of geography examine different aspects of
the complexity of geography reality. The Third Law of
Geography explores the use of similarity in geographic
configuration (structure of variables and spatial foot print)
while the First Law and the Second Law examines the
variation over distance (spatial correlation by the First Law
and spatial heterogeneity by the Second Law). The other
difference is that the First and Second Laws focus on
geographic similarity or differences based on one vari-
able, that is spatial distance, while the Third Law focuses
on the similarity in the configuration of many geographic
variables. In some way, the First Law and the Second Law
could be seen as the special cases of the Third Law.
In their applications to spatial prediction, the Third
Law relaxes the constraints imposed by the First Law and
the Second Law by allowing the representativeness of a
single sample to be explicitly used in spatial prediction.
There is no need for the quantification and expression of
explicit relationships, and thus the requirement on sam-
ple size and sample distribution, which is an important
condition of spatial prediction based on the First Law
and the Second Law as well as the statistical principle,
can be avoided. Clearly, the use of a single sample point
does have its cost since a single sample point does not
have the degree of freedom to check itself for the infor-
mation it contains as well as the relationship it repre-
sents. Efforts are under way to quantify the reliability of a
single sample point when using it in spatial prediction
(Liu 2017; Liu, et al., under review).
The uncertainty computed based on the representa-
tiveness of a sample point to a prediction point as
expressed in similarity between the geographic config-
uration of the sample and that of the prediction point is
extremely useful not only in assessing the quality of the
results from spatial prediction but also in allocating error
reduction efforts (Zhang et al. 2016; Li et al. 2016). This
uncertainty is different from the error variance of predic-
tion from the Kriging family of models in that the Kriging
family of methods report the error variance of prediction
due to the spatial distribution of samples while the
uncertainty computed based on the Third Law measures
how well the various geographic configurations in the
study area have been represented by the configurations
already captured by the sample points. It directly
assesses the sufficiency of samples in capturing the spa-
tial variability of the study area.
6. Conclusion
This paper presents an important geographic principle,
referred to as the Third Law of Geography, in the con-
text of spatial prediction. This new principle (law) pro-
vides a new way how spatial prediction can be
conducted, which is fundamentally different from
those based on other principles (namely the First Law,
the Second Law of Geography and the statistical prin-
ciple). The key differences are: 1) the use of comparison
of geographic configuration, rather than the explicit
extraction of relationships; 2) the use of representative-
ness of a single sample point, rather than the average
representation of a sample set.
In summary, spatial prediction based on the Third Law
of Geography has the following properties: 1) no specific
requirement on the distribution nor the size of sample
set, 2) the use of a single sample point for capturing
representation to the study area, and 3) the uncertainty
measure expressing the coverage of the various geo-
graphic configurations. These properties make spatial
prediction more suitable for estimating spatial variation
of geographic variables over areas of complex geo-
graphic reality in terms of samples required, uncertainty
provision as well as guidance to error reduction efforts.
Acknowledgements
The work reported here was supported by grants from National
Natural Science Foundation of China (Project No.: 41431177),
National Basic Research Program of China (Project No.:
2015CB954102), PAPD, and Outstanding Innovation Team in
Colleges and Universities in Jiangsu Province. Supports to A-
Xing Zhu through the Vilas Associate Award, the Hammel
Faculty Fellow Award, and the Manasse Chair Professorship
from the University of Wisconsin Madison are greatly

appreciated. We also greatly appreciate the detail reviews and
the helpful comments from the two reviewers.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
ORCID
A-Xing Zhu http://orcid.org/0000-0002-5725-0460
Cheng-Zhi Qin http://orcid.org/0000-0002-5910-9807
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