On Fri, 10 Jul 2020 at 14:10, Mateusz Konieczny via Tagging < tagging@openstreetmap.org> wrote:
> > Jul 10, 2020, 15:04 by pla16...@gmail.com: > > I've just realized what prompted the back of my mind into writing the > preceding paragraph. landcover=barren (or natural=barren) seems > to handle things nicely without worrying about soil/clay/humus > distinctions. > > barren is horrible as it can be easily interpreted as including also paved > surfaces, > Ummm, not really. Not in British English. I'd never describe paved surfaces as barren. Technically, I suppose they are, but they don't fit my mental category of barren. bare rock, areas with poor plant growth and many other cases > as not a native speaker - natural=barren_soil seems more reasonable > and harder to misinterpret > It doesn't feel right to me. Bare soil, yes. That's soil with no plants. Barren soil means incapable of sustaining plant life, and that is harder to determine. You can determine that land is barren from aerial imagery (if you have images from different seasons and years). You need on-the-ground survey to determine that it's bare soil. And I suspect that such areas are rarely uniformly bare soil but may have patches of clay, sand, or gravel. Also, soil degrades or erodes given enough time - the Sahara was once fertile land, now it's sand. -- Paul
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