In the 1992 Spatial Data Transfer Standard (SDTS), one of the first public standard models of geographic information, an attempt was made to formally distinguish them: an entity as the real-world phenomenon, an object as a representation thereof (e.g. on paper or digital), and a feature as the combination of both entity and representation objects.
[9] In contrast, biomes occupy large areas of the globe and often encompass many different kinds of geographical features, including mountain ranges.
A landform comprises a geomorphological unit and is largely defined by its surface form and location in the landscape, as part of the terrain, and as such is typically an element of topography.
Settlements range in components from a small number of dwellings grouped together to the largest of cities with surrounding urbanized areas.
Other landscape features such as roads, enclosures, field systems, boundary banks and ditches, ponds, parks and woods, mills, manor houses, moats, and churches may be considered part of a settlement.
[14] Examples are governmental units such as a state, cadastral land parcels, mining claims, zoning partitions of a city, and church parishes.
These are purely conceptual entities established by edict or practice, although they may align with visible features (e.g. a river boundary), and may be subsequently manifested on the ground, such as by survey markers or fences.
For example, grid lines, latitudes, longitudes, the Equator, the prime meridian, and many types of boundary, are shown on maps of Earth, but do not physically exist.
In GIS, maps, statistics, databases, and other information systems, a geographic feature is represented by a set of descriptors of its various characteristics.