> On 8/19/2015 2:29 AM, Nathan Mixter wrote:
>> I would like to see areas in OSM categorized as either land use, land cover
>> (which we call natural for the most part in OSM) or administrative to clear
>> the confusion. I am also in favor of eliminating the landuse=forest tag at
>> least in its current incarnation and switching any official forested areas
>> to boundary tags.
>>
>> I think most of us would agree that having trees across an area with few or
>> no trees looks weird. Yes, I know - don't tag for the render, blah blah. But
>> it seems like it would make sense if we kept wood and forest areas separate.
>> Since natural=wood and landuse=forest virtually render the same now, they
>> should be treated differently than they are currently.
Thank you for chiming in, Nathan.
Paul Norman <[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>> replies:
> As this isn't US specific, you should probably raise this on the tagging list.
>
> One of the few areas of forest tagging where there is consensus is that a US
> "National Forest" does not get a landuse=forest tag. Fortunately, we're
> getting towards having fixed up many areas in the US where this was made.
> Beyond that, there are many opinions on where to use natural=wood and where
> to use landuse=forest, none of which are universal. This is why OpenStreetMap
> Carto renders natural=wood the same as landuse=forest. It's also intentional
> that trees are present on the rendering everywhere that one of these is
> tagged.
And this last part, I believe, is the source of at least part of the confusion.
My reading of the wiki for the many years I have been an OSM contributor (most
of the history of this project) is that:
natural=wood is used for what is sometimes called “primeval forest.” That is,
a natural area of largely/mostly trees which have not been cut down (ever, or
for a very long time) and are not going to be cut down, and
landuse=forest is used for what can be characterized as “timber, which can and
will be harvested from the trees that grow here” (as an agricultural product,
to make lumber, pulp, paper, wood products…).
Rendering these identically (or nearly) is problematic because these truly are
different land uses. The land cover which makes them up, as well as their
appearance (in real life on the ground, via aerial or satellite images) are
identical or close to it, but they are distinctly different land uses: what
might be called as different as a farm and a “vegetation sanctuary” (where no
harvesting or “farming” is allowed).
I don’t know what the rationale was behind mapnik rendering conflating these
two (natural=wood and landuse=forest) to be so similar with “little trees," but
again, it is at least some of the source of the confusion. This discussion
goes on and on, and I believe that is a good thing, as it brings us closer to a
more universal understanding of how to tag under what circumstances.
And Paul, I still believe it would be proper to tag those areas inside of US
National Forests which ARE actually forested to have a tag of landuse=forest.
After all, the US Forest Service (who administers them for all Americans, their
owner) is part of the US Department of Agriculture, and more often than not (I
agree, not in wilderness areas found inside of USFS lands) I CAN harvest downed
wood there (to make a fire when safe to do so, for example) and that most
certainly qualifies as me harvesting timber in my forest lands. I won’t press
this by (new, continuing) wild and aggressive tagging in the map, preferring
instead to listen for a wider consensus.
Tagging USFS boundaries with the (newer) boundary tags seems to me to be a good
direction for us to go: accurate and what feels like a fresh start. Land use
and/or land cover still need to be better defined as to their usage in these
areas as the consensus about their semantics remains muddy, and conflated
rendering does not seem to be helping.
SteveA
California
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