| Sampling features are artefacts of an observational strategy, and have no significant function outside of their role in the observation process. The physical characteristics of the features themselves are of little interest, except perhaps to the manager of a sampling campaign.
EXAMPLE A “station” is essentially an identifiable locality where a sensor system or procedure may be deployed and an observation made. In the context of the observation model, it connotes the “world in the vicinity of the station”, so the observed properties relate to the physical medium at the station, and not to any physical artefact such as a mooring, buoy, benchmark, monument, well, etc.
NOTE A transient sampling feature, such as a ships-track or flight-line, might be identified and described, but is unlikely to be revisited exactly.
A sampling feature is intended to sample some feature-of-interest in an application domain. However, in some cases the identity, and even the exact type, of the sampled feature may not be known when observations are made using the sampling features.
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