>> A relation for all would be ok too, as long as the private inholdings are
>> not removed from the NF (which I think has been done in some cases).
>
Bradley White writes
> I've argued for this in the past on this mailing list, but have since
> come around to disagreeing with this position over tagging semantics.
> Most NF boundaries are now tagged with 'boundary=protected_area', in
> which case the boundary should represent physical land that the NF
> actually owns and manages, and not the congressionally-declared
> boundary. In my area, half of the city of Reno and nearly all of
> Truckee fall within an congress-declared/administrative NF boundary -
> these areas are certainly not protected.
"Private inholdings are NOT removed from the NF?" (Emphasis mine). That
doesn't make sense to me. OSM WANTS to (logically) remove private inholdings
from NFs. We do so with relations where inholdings are members with the
"inner" role.
While it certainly may exist, I'm not aware of a disparity between the
"congressionally declared boundary" and any other boundary of a NF, including
"physical land that the NF actually owns and manages." How would anyone know
where this latter boundary is? (Opinion?) Around Reno is Humboldt-Toiyabe NF,
largest NF in the lower 48, nearly 10,000 square miles, that is LARGE.
Wikimedia has a nice interactive map of this (superimposed on OSM data) at
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humboldt–Toiyabe_National_Forest . Yes, it looks
like "half of Reno" is within this boundary. I agree with you it is odd /
unusual that this mix of urbanization is technically within NF boundaries.
Yet, it is. I believe OSM wants to map this NF "as is," not "where it appears
the area is 'not protected'" (again, by your opinion?)
National Forests are federally-managed land, often with many inholdings in
highly complex landuse blends. OSM has the "machinery" to represent them:
data structures called multipolygons with membership roles of outer and inner,
plus tags. If thousands of residential parcels in Reno "should" logically be
excluded from H-T, yes, that's ambitious (and rather odd / unusual / even
wacky), but it seems to me it is correct to represent it that way in OSM. Can
somebody (literally or figuratively) call up Bill Dunkelberger (Forest
Supervisor) and ask him the questions "why are thousands of Reno's residential
parcels inside the boundaries of our forest? Can you explain how a map might
properly represent this?" There might be some history about the city of Reno,
how Congress declares federal protection with a fee simple boundary, likely a
great deal of hand-waving and probably an "admission" that constructing a
ridiculously-complex multipolygon could properly represent it, but only with
mind-boggling intricacies of detail. Are we up for the task?!
> IMO, a tagging scheme that better represents the meaning of these two
> boundaries would be:
> 1. 'boundary=protected_area' around fee simple NF land ownership,
> since this describes the actual protected areas of land
> 2. 'boundary=administrative' (with a not-yet-existing 'admin_level')
> around declared NF boundaries, since this is an administrative
> boundary for the NF and doesn't necessarily show what land is actually
> managed by the NF.
I am virtually certain we do not want to put boundary=administrative on NFs
(and without admin_level, this doesn't make sense; the two tags are
codependent). This EXCLUDES them from whatever admin_level you MIGHT give
them, making them a "hole" in that entity at that level. Many years ago, I
(mistakenly) thought that national parks should haven an admin_level=2 set on
them (and state parks 4 and county parks 6) but that logically punches a hole
in the country, state or county, so "don't do that."
> We should even consider not including congressionally-declared
> boundaries, since they aren't even theoretically verifiable on the
> ground, and really don't necessarily indicate any kind of protection
> of the land within the boundary. Fee simple ownership is at least
> usually ground-verifiable with small yellow "NF boundary" placards.
This needs more discussion, with a better declaration of terms. If Congress
declares an area as protected, OSM should map it as protected. That doesn't
seem weird to me, although "half of Reno in a NF" does. Most importantly how
would we / who declares where is this "other" boundary? (not the Congressional
one, the one which says "the USFS actually owns and manages this") Very
confusing as stated; I think we can state this more clearly.
SteveA
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