From Top-Level to Domain Ontologies: Ecosystem Classifications as a Case Study

This paper shows how to use a top-level ontology to create robust and logically coherent domain ontology in a way that facilitates computational implementation and interoperability. It uses a domain ontology of ecosystem classification and delineation outlined informally Bailey's paper on 'Delineation of Ecoregions' as a running example. Baily's (from an ontological perspective) rather imprecise and ambiguous definitions are made more logically rigorous and precise by (a) restating the informal definitions formally using the top-level terms whose semantics was specified rigorously in a logic-based top-level ontology and (b) by enforcing the clear distinction of types of relations as specified at the top-level and specific relations of a given type as they occur in the ecosystem domain. In this way it becomes possible to formally distinguish a number of relations which logical interrelations are important but which have been confused and been taken to be a single relation before.

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