Should we add seasons?

[cmungall]

Seasons can be modeled as occurrents, analogous to developmental stages. They may have canonical starts and stops that are region specific (just as developmental stages have canonical start and end times in a species) but these may not be constant.

The use case here is axiomatizing condition ontologies such as the planteome EO ontology:

   is_a EO:0007027 ! seasonal environment ***  [DEF: "A plant treatment (EO:0001001) involving an exposure to a given conditions of regional seasons."]
    is_a EO:0007033 ! rabi season ***  [DEF: "The treatment involving an exposure to the crop season (October-March) as practiced in South Asia."]
    is_a EO:0007034 ! kharif season ***  [DEF: "The treatment involving an exposure to the crop season (May-October) as practised in South Asia."]
    is_a EO:0007035 ! winter season ***  [DEF: "The treatment involving an exposure to the winter season."]
    is_a EO:0007036 ! summer season ***  [DEF: "The treatment involving an exposure to the summer season."]
    is_a EO:0007037 ! spring season ***  [DEF: "The treatment involving an exposure to the spring season."]
    is_a EO:0007038 ! autumn season ***  [DEF: "The treatment involving an exposure to the autumn season."]
    is_a EO:0007285 ! rainy season ***  [DEF: "The treatment involving an exposure to the wet or the rainy season."]
    is_a EO:0007286 ! dry season ***  [DEF: "The treatment involving an exposure to the dry season."]

(note that the EO terms should obviously be suffixed with "condition" to distinguish them from actual seasons)

occurrent has the following children:
http://purl.obolibrary.org/obo/BFO_0000003

I think process is the most natural here.

An argument could be made that modeling of qualities would be better; but I think it has to be something with temporal boundaries.

[pbuttigieg]

We should definitely add seasons. I agree that processes are the way to go, with links to qualities and conditions. Weather and climate will be important here.

[pbuttigieg]

First attempt:
The relevant process is the change in a planet's exposure (often in terms of duration, periodicity, and absolute energy transfer) to electromagnetic radiation (which drives downstream changes in temperature and ecology) over its orbit around a star or similar EM energy source. A season is a fiat division of this process, which is actually continuous, much like the division of the day into morning, afternoon, evening, and night.

Thus:

• astronomical barycentre: the centre of mass of two or more bodies that are orbiting each other, or the point (BFO:site) around which they both orbit.
• orbital process: a process in which a celestial body moves in a curved path around an astronomical barycentre (could be a BFO:site) in space, held in position by gravity.
• planetary orbital process: an orbital process in which a planet moves in an elliptical path around the barycentre of a planetary system.
• planetary obliquity: a quality inhering in a planet by virtue of the angle between that planet's rotational axis and its orbital axis.
• seasonal change process: a process in which the environmental conditions on a planetary surface vary as a function of the amount of radiation it receives from an energy source such as a star during a planetary orbital process and its planetary obliquity.
• season: a fiat part of a seasonal change process.
• summer: a season in which radiation received by a planet's surface reaches its maximum during a seasonal change process.

Seasons are usually 'centred' around things like equinoxes and solstices, which can provide the central point for the fiat boundary.

Thoughts?

[pbuttigieg]

season: a fiat part of a seasonal change process.

Would imply that a season is a process. Probably best to say that it is a temporal window that overlaps with part of a seasonal change process.

This also is more compatible with thoughts from @phismith

[phismith]

a season is a 2-dimensional temporal interval

this applies both to the calendar sense and to the sense used in e.g.
growing season, monsoon season

BS

On Mon, Dec 14, 2015 at 6:31 PM, Pier Luigi Buttigieg <
notifications@github.com> wrote:

season: a fiat part of a seasonal change process.

Would imply that a season is a process. Probably best to say that it is a
temporal window that overlaps with part of a seasonal change process.

This also is more compatible with thoughts from @phismith
https://github.com/phismith

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