Dear Russian readers (and others of course), today, using the OSM slippy map, I came across a regular structure in the Saratov Oblast, Russia. Map data and aerial images suggest it be wood or stripes of wood. It looks like a barrier. Against what or whom? Or when was it grown?
The belt starts near 52.9420 N, 49.7866 E, some twenty kilometres south of the city of Samara, and continues in south-western direction before it is interrupted at 50.5091 N, 47.1980 E. Its width is fairly constant at about 1 km, but every now end then the belt's character changes from a thick solid line to a four-striped grid of wooded lines with a width of 50 to 80 metres each. It eventually continues further south-western at 45.9253 N, 43.7038 E near Elista and goes on with smaller interruptions as far as to the northern foothills of the Caucasus at 44.0751 N, 42.2211 E. In length measuring several hundred kilometres, the belt is pretty distinctive. By the way, there are similar structures smaller in width around Samara. And there is a nice M-character at position 45.5352 N, 43.0252 E. It has no counterpart in aeral images, neither Google's nor Bing's, and seems to have been part of a bigger formation of alphabetic characters become landscape (just west of it remnants can be seen). Vandalism? Since I'm not familiar with the described area, I'd like to know what all this is about. Maybe someone might shed some light on these objects? I'd be grateful for any hints, since an extensive search on the net did not provide me with any hard facts. Thank you in advance Skagen [1] http://www.openstreetmap.org/way/131898740#map=12/52.8275/49.7461 [2] http://www.openstreetmap.org/?mlat=45.5621&mlon=43.0225#map=10/45.5621/43.0225 _______________________________________________ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
