GIS plays a vital role in Earth sciences by providing a powerful means of observing the world and various tools for solving complex problems. The scientific community has used GIS to reveal fascinating details about the Earth and other planets. This paper discuss on recent advances in GIS for Earth sciences includes 12 publications from esteemed research groups worldwide. The research and review papers in this special issue belong to the following broad categories: Earth science informatics (geo-informatics), mining, hydrology, natural hazards, and society.

GIS is an important tool used to solve complex spatial problems in geo-informatics. Several articles dealing with basic algorithms for spatial data analysis is included in this special issue propose an efficient parallel algorithm for polygon overlay analysis. Overlay analysis is a fundamental operator in spatial data analytics and is widely used in Earth science applications. The proposed algorithm includes procedures for active-slave spatial index decomposition for intersection, multi-strategy Hilbert ordering decomposition, and parallel spatial union. The application of their new parallel algorithm to a land-use map of China consisting of multiple polygons with 15,615 elements and 886,547 points shows that the algorithm can perform polygon overlay analysis with high efficiency. Therefore, the study contributes to geo-informatics by allowing the processing of large scale spatial data for spatial data analytics. Vector maps in GIS have been widely used in various fields, including Earth science.