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EnvironmentOntology / envo

A community-driven ontology for the representation of environments
http://www.environmentontology.org
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Consider updates to Ice Cap definition #654

Open rduerr opened 5 years ago

rduerr commented 5 years ago

The WMO GCW report combined definition is:

A dome-shaped mass of glacier ice that spreads out in all directions; an ice cap is usually larger than an icefield but less than an ice sheet (typically less than 50,000 square-kilometers (12 million acres)). It is generally considered improper to refer to the Greenland and Antarctic Ice Sheets as ice caps.

The flow pattern is less influenced by the subsurface topography than is true of icefields and valley glaciers. The definition embraces small as well as large ice bodies.

The usage '(polar) ice cap' for the sea ice cover of the Arctic Ocean or Southern Ocean is confusing and best avoided.

At least some of this needs to be included in a comment if not axiomized.

Garybc commented 5 years ago

I put this here as a placeholder since one of the defs had a simple distinction between an ice cap and the Ice sheet item that we were working on.