Workshop on Spatial and Geographic Ontologies on 23 rd September , 2003 ( prior to COSIT 03 ) Ethnophysiography

Ethnophysiography is a new term coined by the authors to refer to an ethnoscience of landforms. Ethnophysiography seeks to document and compare terms used in various languages and cultures to refer to the natural landscape and its parts, and the meanings of those terms. Ethnophysiography is an important part of efforts to construct ontologies of the geographic domain because the categories of landforms, water bodies, etc. are not clearly differentiated in nature the way terms for kinds of plants and animals typically are. Landscape terms and their meanings appear to subdivide reality differently in different cultures; thus clear definitions of meanings in an ontological framework with universal expressive power are needed if semantic interoperability across languages and cultures is to be achieved.