SPATIAL SCIENCE CORE Abstract The Spatial Sciences Core (SSC) is designed to characterize the social and physical environment in regions of Southern and Central Africa where studies of the epidemiology of malaria, vector biology and parasite genomics will be conducted. The Core will provide an environmental context to better understand the drivers of malaria transmission in regions with different stages of malaria control. To extend and compliment this objective, the Spatial Science Core includes a dedicated component in the research and application of spatial statistical methods. We hypothesize that having a strong translational research component in spatial statistics will allow projects to move beyond the mapping of environment and malaria metrics to statistically linking dynamic changes in the environment to corresponding variation in malaria transmission, thus providing a sound scientific approach to identifying environmental interactions and extrapolating beyond the study areas to similar malaria transmission settings.