>Protect area and National Park boundaries were supposed to be less difficult >to confirm and more valid.
The NF administrative boundaries are basically impossible to verify on-the-ground if that's the standard we are setting to demonstrate verifiability. Typically, the only indication are the large welcoming signs placed adjacent to major highways running through NF land, and even then these typically aren't placed exactly on these boundaries. For example, the administrative boundary for the Humboldt-Toiyabe NF includes half the city of Reno, but none of this urban land is protected at all, and there is zero on-the-ground indication of this boundary. > But if what we are going to start mapping in the USA is simply the federal > ownership of land, that's just pure cadastre data. We might as well try to > map all the private land parcels and keep that information accurate - but > both tasks are too difficult, and the data is better provided by local > governments directly. I think this is a bit of a slippery slope argument. At least in California, the NF land ownership boundaries are public record with no copyright (https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Contributors#United_States). The boundaries of the federally-owned parcels *are* the protected areas - you can't accurately map them without the parcel data here. Using this data doesn't mean we have to start importing county parcel data carte blanche. If we shouldn't use land ownership because this relies on parcel data, and the reason we don't use parcel data is because it is subject to change and generally unverifiable on-the-ground, then we really shouldn't be using NF administrative boundaries either since they are likewise imported from easily accessed government data sources, subject to change, and unverifiable on-the-ground. _______________________________________________ Talk-us mailing list Talk-us@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us
