How do data sets (layers) interrelate?
Most layers will have inputs and outputs. Certain layers will have their inputs and outputs connected, often by the user’s choice, sometimes by the authors’ choice. Where the choice has been made by an author, it will always be a choice of inputs to his/her/their own layer. Outputs are on offer to the system, but their use is not determined by the author of that layer. For example, ecological communities on a mountain slope are strongly distributed according to temperature, with cooler communities higher than warm ones. As temperatures rise, the communities do too. If average local climate temperatures are connected as an input to population distribution of species on the mountain (involving at least two separate layers), then playing the global warming script forward would show concentric rings of species climbing the mountain, and the central (highest) group would shrink and/or disappear. Zoom, pan, and time “knobs” for the FGIS presentation will synchronously affect all layers displ
