Abstract: The classification and description of spatial incremental changes is one of the fundamental problems in geo-spatial data modeling and updating. It has a significant role in the spatio-temporal data organization, incremental change capture, event-based updating and propagation of changes. Existing studies in this field was focused mainly on the classification of the whole of objects and the incremental changes of spatial objects has not been well addressed. This paper examined the role of the common parts of two spatio-temporal objects and proposed to consider both the common parts and differences in the distinguishing and formalizing the incremental changes of spatial objects. A formal description model was proposed based on three elements, i.e., difference, difference by, and intersection, with the associated regularization operation. A formal classification of the incremental changes was derived for both area and linear objects. The results of this formal classification have been applied to develop the operations of incremental capture and to visualize and analyze the incremental changes.