On Wednesday 04 April 2018, Malcolm Herring wrote: > > It seems some mappers go to the extreme opposite and map the > > coastline across the mouth of an estuary that is clearly part of > > the ocean: > > > > <https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/186710973> > > Many ocean/river boundaries are not arbitrary, but reflect official > boundaries where a coastal authority's water ends and a river > authority's water begins.
There is no such thing as an ocean/river boundary - there are political boundaries and there are limits of physical geography features. When mappers align geometries of physical geography features (like natural=water, waterway=riverbank or natural=coastline) to administrative boundaries or baselines that is always wrong and is usually done to communicate a certain non-verifiable view of the physical reality to underline certain political goals - in case of the Rio de la Plata this is the aim to defend the claims Argentina and Uruguay make regarding the limits of their territorial waters (which are internationally disputed): http://digitalrepository.unm.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1790&context=nrj https://www.state.gov/documents/organization/57675.pdf Independent of that the placement of the coastline at river mouths is generally somewhat variable. I wrote a proposal a few years back aimed at defining some verifiable limits for that: https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Proposed_Features/Coastline-River_transit_placement -- Christoph Hormann http://www.imagico.de/ _______________________________________________ Tagging mailing list [email protected] https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/tagging
