On 03/15/2016 12:28 PM, Frederik Ramm wrote:
I have zero knowledge about the Adirondack; I just echoed your own
words: You said that there are "difficulties inherent in getting changes
made by local mappers working independently", and I said if that's the
case then the import is not likely to be useful for a long time as it
will just "echo" third party data.
Brian May in his encouraging message talks about laying "the groundwork
for others to build on" and says "You will also no doubt spark interest
from more active contributors who will notice that there's major quality
improvements in your area and pitch in to help - potentially a lot."
There is a bit of miscommunication here, because you and Brian
are both right.
I don't really foresee that a great amount of change will happen
to the hydrography. As I said, it's pretty stable, with the exception
of where the beavers have chosen to build this year. Even that
is repeatable. There are areas in the wetland inventory that are
marked as sporadically inundated, and our friend Castor canadensis
is responsible for much of that inundation.
Nevertheless, I do see this import as being a potential catalyst for
getting other types of data mapped in the field. The alignments of
hiking trails, the locations of trail shelters, abandoned fire towers,
archaeologic sites, and the like are going to come only from citizen
mappers like myself. With the paucity of data in the area, several
hikers that I've tried to recruit to the project have seen it as a
hopeless task. With a background of the natural features, laying in
trail alignments and lean-to locations is a much more manageable
task, and people can see where it would lead to a usable map.
Arguably, we could do the same thing if we had a displayed map that
augmented OSM with the public data sets that we choose not to
import, but there doesn't seem to be a great amount of interest
in that sort of project, either!
So, it's not about importing the hydrography to get mappers working
on the hydrography. It's about importing the hydrography to encourage
mappers to work on the things that the government does not and
is not likely to map. The USGS no longer does so. New York State
has a database of roads and trails in the park, but it is of questionable
quality. The Adirondack Mountain Club, which maintains the Northville-
Placid Trail (at 222.7 km, the longest single trail in the park),
its official distance table for the trail
(http://www.nptrail.org/?page_id=59)
largely from OSM and my field notes, and most of the trail is in OSM
only because I put it there. (Incidentally, let me observe that a 200+
kilometre walk, some of it as much as 30 km from the nearest road
you can drive on, makes for an interesting mapping expedition!)
While Brian seems to disagree with my "one strong negative comment", he
also seems to disagree with your very own judgement that it is very
unlikely that the data is going to be edited and improved; he seems to
believe that the import can be a viable foundation for original
surveying by volunteers in the Adirondack. I don't know if that's just
wishful thinking or if he has first-hand experience of the area that
goes against yours.
I'd say that his experience agrees with mine. A hiker sees the map at
openstreetmap.org as it stands, and says, "Why should I bother? There's
nothing there!" I've found that my own map - a typical view is
http://kbk.is-a-geek.net/catskills/test3.html?la=43.2196&lo=-74.2107&z=14
is a much better recruiting tool, because people can see what's
already available and what needs to be added. I can say to a friend,
"Oh, you're going to Cathead Mountain? Would you mind getting a GPS
waypoint for the fire tower and a track for the trail up to it, and push
them
to OSM? You don't even need to add them to the map, if you don't want
to, just send me a link to where you uploaded the track and I'll do the
rest!" (And hopefully Rob will actually do that trip at some point...)
--
73 de ke9tv/2, Kevin
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