Unpack: terminus

[sjskhalsa]

A glacier terminus has historically been used as an indicator of glacier status, mapped as a location (a vector, or a single geographic position). In this sense it is not part of a glacier but the boundary between glacier and non-glacier.

[pbuttigieg]

Simultaneously, the starting definition refers to the terminus as synonymous with the glacier toe or snout.

So it looks like we have to create classes to capture the terminus as a part of a glacier (with arbitrary internal boundary) and the terminus' external boundary.

[Garybc]

There are some terms like moraine that refer to things after a glacier has left.

[Garybc]

Closed by mistake...

[Garybc]

Pier's point about terminus being part of the glacier. We have many types of parts including the zones and lines and relations between them. I'm not sure that we yet have framed these in a way to handle all of them but it would seem that we could look at the FMA/anatomy related work of BFO to see it would provide a model.
Can we for example have glacier anatomy descriptions like what they have for the heart?
Heart is a
organ with cavitated organ parts which has as its parts chambers continuous with the systemic and pulmonary arterial and venous trees.

Glacier is a
landform with [??] parts extending from [??] to [??] which has as its parts zones continuous with the [??] situated in [??] enclosed by the bona fide (or fiat?) boundary of [??]

We do have some of the things they consider - glaciers' material entities such as the snow mass in the zones. "Material anatomical entity is a Physical anatomical entity which has mass." FMA

FMA considers anatomical structure - its parts are connected and spatially related to one
another in patterns determined by coordinated gene expression.
We might replace "coordinated gene expression" by the appropriate physics involving landscape, gravity, frictional activity etc.

They have simple, compound and cavitated anatomical structures. The lines are immaterial entities such as glacier surfaces, levels or coordinates, the shape of the glacier and of the zones. FMA considers particular arrangement relations of these entities such as: location, containment, continuity, adjacency, attachment and implied boundaries.
http://sigpubs.biostr.washington.edu/archive/00000204/01/FMA_Chapter_final.pdf