I agree with sah about this article particularly with respect to the need to have task specific ontologies rather than a specific universal ontology of landforms in many cases. Those who study a mountain or require precise definitions of what a mountain is would require an ontology of landforms although they may be the only ones to use such an ontology. In class, it was mentioned that keeping spatial uncertainties present in the data was often very important in representing different views on intangible concepts such as disputed country boundaries. This same thinking can apply in terms of ontologies as well.
An ontology, to me, seems like a dictionary of the spatial meaning associated with a particular word. In this sense, and perhaps I have misinterpreted what an ontology is exactly, an ontology could have multiple definitions of a particular word and the user could select the correct definition for their purposes from the ontology. I compare this to different types of citations available on citation manager software. There are many different ways of representing crucial citation information and the user need only select the one they require. Why could this not apply an ontology of landforms?
-Outdoor Addict