[Tagging] Feature Proposal - RFC - leaf_type and leaf_cycle
Rudolf Martin
rudolf.martin at gmx.de
Fri May 2 19:56:56 UTC 2014
Hi all,
there are several tags to indicate vegetation with leaves, e.g.
"landuse=forest", "natural=wood", "natural=scrub", "natural=tree" and
others.
Today we have one additional key "wood=" to describe the type of
leaves. This key is arguable. The oxford dictionary says: "wood = 1.
The hard fibrous material that forms the main substance of the trunk or
branches of a tree or shrub. 2. (also woods) An area of land, smaller
than a forest, that is covered with growing trees."
The usage of ''wood='' for the type of leaves is not suitable because
wood relates to the trunc, not to the leaves. Maybe it is suitable for
"natural=wood", but the key also relates to forest, trees, hedges and
shrubs.
The values "wood=coniferous" and "wood=deciduous" are ambiguous.
''Coniferous'' describes the kind of seeds, not the type of leaves, nor
the phenology. ''Deciduous'' describes the phenology, not the type of
leaves, but it seems that it is used for the leaftype.
''Coniferous'' stand for "cone-bearing seed plants with vascular
tissue". This plants are mostly needle-leafed, but there also exist
some with broad leaves.
There is also the value "wood=evergreen" to describe the phenology, but
not the kind of leaves. This applies to needle-leaved and broad-leaved
plants.
Other values are ''palm'', ''nipa_palm'', ''eucalypt'', ''filao'' and
''casuarina''.
There is no tagging for evergreen broad-leaved plants (e.g. most trees
in the rain forest), nor for deciduous needle-leaved plants (e.g.
larchs).
It is very complicated to include all combinations of leave type and
phenology in one key, especially in consideration that the phenology is
not known in every case.
We need two distinct keys to describe the type and phenology of leaves,
suitable for all kind of plants and all kind of keys.
It is advantageous to use new keys, to avoid confusion with changing
values of an already used key.
Proposal:
"leaf_type=" describes the type of leaves, such as broad-leaved or
needle-leaved.
"leaf_cycle=" describes the phenology of leaves, such as evergreen or
deciduous.
http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Proposed_features/leaftype
Rudolf
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