This paper reviews the major advances achieved in the Orion Nebula through
the use of integral field spectroscopy (IFS). Since the early work of
Vasconcelos and collaborators in 2005, this technique has facilitated the
investigation of global properties of the nebula and its morphology, providing
new clues to better constrain its 3D structure. IFS has led to the discovery of
shock-heated zones at the leading working surfaces of prominent Herbig-Haro
objects as well as the first attempt to determine the chemical composition of
Orion protoplanetary disks, also known as proplyds. The analysis of these
morphologies using IFS has given us new insights into the abundance discrepancy
problem, a long-standing and unresolved issue that casts doubt on the
reliability of current methods used for the determination of metallicities in
the universe from the analysis of H II regions. Results imply that high-density
clumps and high-velocity flows may play an active role in the production of
such discrepancies. Future investigations based on the large-scale IFS mosaic
of Orion will be very valuable for exploring how the integrated effect of
small-scale structures may have impact at larger scales in the framework of
star-forming regions.Comment: 15 pages, 8 figures. Review paper published in Advances in Astronomy
as part of the special issue "Metals in 3D: A Cosmic View from Integral Field
Spectroscopy". More information: http://dx.doi.org/10.1155/2014/27932
