Way 570038402, named "Rute", is certainly different in appearance than the "tidal channels" / rivers through the mangroves in my area. "Rute" is a V-shaped channel of deeper water between shoals or tidal mud flats, and the coast is clearly a long way off. I can see how this shouldn't be labeled as a river.
The channels between mangroves, however, can look almost the same as a real river, whether from aerial imagery, when flying over, or from a boat at sea level. The water flow may reverse with the tide if the river water flow is slow. The only way to determine if a given channel is a "real" river is to follow it upstream to the end of mangroves, which may be dozens of kilometers away, or carefully measure salinity and average current. This makes it difficult to verify in person or when looking at a limited area in an editor. Because of these problem, it's not surprising that many people have been marking the narrow water channels between mangroves as waterway=river, and I don't think this will stop happening. So I would favor a tagging scheme that would allow waterway=river as the top=level tag. Also, I believe making new top-level tags is discouraged. What do you all think about using waterway=river & river=tidalchannel for water channels in mangroves? (I would also suggest adding tidal=yes & salt=yes to fit with existing tags for describing water bodies such as tidal rivers and salt lakes) Or would it be sufficient to use tidal=yes & salt=yes with waterway=river, without any new tag, for these waterways through the mangroves? -Joseph Eisenberg in Papua, Indonesia On Sat, Sep 8, 2018 at 6:35 PM Christoph Hormann <o...@imagico.de> wrote: > On Saturday 08 September 2018, Graeme Fitzpatrick wrote: > > > > Question for you though in regard to these "non-rivers"? > > > > Are these channels permanent or do they move as tidal runoff changes? > > Between mangroves these are fairly static but elsewhere they can change > quite rapidly. > > > & they appear to be named? At least 570038402 is marked as "Rute", > > running through "Ruteplate". My translate has failed me as all it > > comes up with for Rute is rod, stick, cane & similar which doesn't > > make any sense for a waterway? Is there another meaning for Rute, or > > is it possibly a local name? > > Naming of tidal channels is quite common but like most maritime naming > you will often have a hard time to define a geometric verifiability. > Therefore most geometries drawn here are subjective label placement > sketches. In mangrove areas this is a bit different of course. > > But i don't want to discourage anyone from a actually defining new tags > here - just make sure you document them in a verifiable form. > > -- > Christoph Hormann > http://www.imagico.de/ > > _______________________________________________ > Tagging mailing list > Tagging@openstreetmap.org > https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/tagging >
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