[Tagging] FW :Re: RFC: new key Landcover

[Richard Welty]

On 11/16/10 1:40 PM, M∡rtin Koppenhoefer wrote:
> 2010/11/16<john at jfeldredge.com>:
>> If you wanted to describe both the soil and what is growing on the soil, would you use both a surface tag and also a landcover tag?  For example, if you had a sand dune stabilized by beach grass, would you use surface=sand and landcover=beach_grass?
>
> I think that this is a good question. IMHO surface doesn't qualify for
> more then actually "surface", that's why I don't think of it as a good
> tag for soil in general, because soil is comprising a whole layer (can
> be up to some metres thick), which is not what surface is about IMHO.
in general, surface is a poor match to the needs of geologists,
as there is rather a bit more to geology than just the surface.

ditto for agricultural usage, surface is just odd and out of place.
some years a field may be corn, others soy beans, still others
something else. farmers do care about soil types, but a typical
modern soil type map is complex and something that doesn't
seem appropriate for openstreetmap.

richard