The measure for size is area. For polygons, area calculations are standard GIS functions. For raster data, the area of a
region is represented by the number of consecutive cells of the same category. The lower limit of the value for minimum
area is the minimum perceptibility size but should be selected higher due to other relevant map controls (e.g. map
purpose or output media). In principle, two operators exist for conflict resolution. A patch violating the minimum size
constraint can be either deleted or enlarged until the size is above the specified minimum. The possibility to amalgamate
patches of the same category will be discussed in example 2