What is a bounding box?

A bounding box (bbox) is a rectangle defining the geographic extent of a dataset or map view, expressed as minimum and maximum coordinates (often minX, minY, maxX, maxY in a given CRS).

Bbox is used in API requests (fetch only data within this rectangle), catalog metadata, and web map viewport. In GeoJSON an optional bbox can describe the FeatureCollection area.

A bbox is not exactly the same as informal "bounds" (sometimes the visible map edge), though concepts overlap. Bbox is an explicit, reproducible coordinate rectangle; bounds may also mean the actual geometric extent of features, which need not be rectangular.