Ontology Mappings

SWEET and Sea Ice Ontology Mappings

The SSIII project is developing a sea ice ontology. We started with the WMO sea ice operational analysis "egg code" convention and the JCOMM sea ice nomenclature. The draft OWL files are on google code.

Initial issues identified by Ruth Duerr

• I've taken a closer look at the realmCryo and found a number of issues I wanted to draw to your attention.

• There are several subclasses for SeaIce in SWEET (DriftIce, FastIce, SeasonalIce, etc.) but the list is incomplete (for example there is no MultiYear or PerennialIce). This is certainly one place our ontology can help fill in. How to link the ontologies is the main question we want to discuss with you.

• Lead should not be subclass of SeaIce. A Lead is one type of "OpeningInTheIce" which also includes Polynya, Crack, etc. (WMO lists 6 main types). It could be considered a feature of sea ice but it's nature is liquid sea water (admittedly, there are "frozen leads" and cracks that have thin ice in them).

• IN SWEET PackIce is a subclass of DriftIce is a subclass of SeaIce, but in WMO nomenclature these are equivalent terms, although some like to reserve the term pack ice for closely packed drift ice. WMO has terms like "compact" and "consolidated" for this.

Going beyond sea ice...

• In SWEET IceStream is simply a subclass of Ice, whereas it is a feature of an ice sheet.

• IceShelf is correctly a subclass of LandIce (ice of land origin), but it is the seaward extension of an ice sheet or glacier, so should really be a subclass of Glacier.

• IceCap is subclass of PlanetaryRealm, but not directly related to LandIce or even CryoRealm. It should be a subclass of Glacier.

• Calve is an equivalent (and more common) term for a piece of IceShelf that has broken off.

Line Pouchard has used automated alignment tools to identify equivalent classes between SWEET and the Sea Ice ontologies

• Media:SWEET_Sea_Ice_Mappings.zip