Preliminary representation of world population by spherical harmonics.
The geographical arrangement of people on the surface of the earth is approximated by a mathematical equation of 361 terms. This is a convenient form for comparison with other distributions and for use in global change studies, and it has other advantages, but it must be considered preliminary because of data limitations.
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National Center for Geographical Information and Analysis, Geography Department, University of California, Santa Barbara, CA 93106, USA.