Hello SteveA,
Thanks a lot for your reply. I really appreciate you work for updating
the national forests in southern California.
Before posting I already read the wiki pages you mentioned. For me it
seemed that there is still some dispute about how the tag landuse=forest
is used and there exist different approaches. What I only learned now is
that US National Forests are indeed used for timber harvesting (and not
only for forest protection) so I now fully agree that the natural=wood
tag is inappropriate.
However, one thing which I still find strange is to tag large areas of
scrub (bushes without any trees) as landuse=forest. Somebody using the
map may be surprised when not finding any trees in a region mapped as a
forest. [The parts of the Angeles National forest that I have seen so
far are dominated by scrub] For me using the landuse=forest tag in this
case seems to contradict the fact that landuse=forest is supposed to
describe woodland.
In an ideally detailed map those parts would be marked as scrub. For me
it seems that what to do in the current situation is a question of what
to take as a default. Your point of view is marking everything as
landuse=forest and manually excluding scrub land. I thought it would be
better to only mark parts as forest which clearly are woodland. Since
your point of view seems to be the standard practice right now, I agree
that it is probably the best to stick to it (although this means, imho,
ignoring the conflicting definitions of scrub and forest).
Buy the way, what is rendered when a region is landuse=forest and
natural=scrub at the same time?
Thanks
Torsten
On 05/11/2013 01:59 PM, stevea wrote:
Hello Torsten:
Please see our wiki page regarding these data (USFS imported data for
national forests and wildernesses) at
http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/US_Forest_Service_Data.
Please see our wiki pages at
http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Tag:landuse%3Dforest and
http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Tag:natural%3Dwood regarding the
differences between forest (actively managed forests where timber
harvesting can and does take place, whether publicly or privately
owned), and wood, which is "for ancient or virgin woodland, with no
forestry use."
Quite arguably, all national forests ARE landuse=forest: in my mind
there is no clearer example of a landuse tag as "forest" matching so
well as exactly those of the boundaries of national forests. Also
arguably, there are NO natural=wood polygons which would be appropriate
in any national forest, as they are managed forests, not "ancient or
virgin woodland, with no forestry use." These two categories are
mutually exclusive.
The protected_area tags are correct, on that we seem to agree. However,
if there are other natural areas in such protected areas as national
forests, which are correctly tagged landuse=forest (managed timber)
which have other natural coverings, such as scrub or heath, you are
perfectly welcome to add a natural=scrub tag (or whatever) where those
natural landcovers are found, as appropriate. Landcover is an emerging
edge of OSM semantics, and there is much discussion about it:
http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Landcover is a good introduction, and
http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Proposed_features/landcover discusses
a major proposal now under way.
Also, http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Protected_Area_Rendering shows
that protected_area=6 (as national forests are/should be tagged) has
specific polyline and dashing rules, but this (these rules) is/are
proposals for the Kosmos renderer only.
No, natural=wood is not a "better" tag (whether in replacement or as an
additional tag) to the tag of landuse=forest for national forests. There
is no interpretation here: as described above, natural=wood and
landuse=forest are quite mutually exclusive.
SteveA
California
(who recently uploaded the southern California national forests, with
careful tagging and discussion both here and in the first wiki page
mentioned above before doing so)
I am relatively new to the talk-us list and have a question concerning
the landuse tags of national forests. Right now (at least in southern
california) all national forests are landuse=forest which leads to
large green areas on the map which look like they originate from a
very old video game with giant pixels. The boundaries of the national
forest often have nothing to do with the actual
landuse=forest/natural=wood boundaries. I would therefore vote for
deleting the landuse tag [and map it separately] leaving the national
forests only as protected_areas.
Before doing this change I would like to have your input/opinion on
the topic.
I know that this should actually not be a concern but does anybody
know whether protected areas of level 6 (like national forests) are
rendered? (if not this might be a reason for the initial
landuse=forest tag, although this is clearly mapping for the renderer)
One more thing: When I look at the definition of the OSM map features
it seems that natural=wood seems to be a better tag. But this depends
a bit on the interpretation whether landuse=forest is used for land
that is primarily managed for timber production or for woodland that
is in some way maintained by humans.
Torsten
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