[Tagging] waterway=wadi problem

[Tod Fitch]

On Jan 17, 2015, at 11:52 AM, Richard Z. wrote:

> On Sat, Jan 17, 2015 at 07:50:36AM -0800, Tod Fitch wrote:
> 
>> 
>> Based on where I sometimes see old wind driven pumps, I'd guess that many longer (10s of miles long) washes have an underground flow.
> 
> I think so.
> 
>> On the other hand, in the field or using Bing imagery neither I nor any other typical citizen mapper can really determine if there is unseen underground water flow. So so how can that be a criteria for mapping the feature?
> 
> usually you will assume it if there are ponds of open water or swamps 
> in several places along a valley.

A pond/swamp/oasis/cienega in an arid or even semi-arid area is a significant feature that deserve mapping in its own right. Using that to infer information about a nearby or connected item seems a stretch to me.

The more I think about this issue the more I am coming to the feeling that waterway=wadi ought to be deprecated and we should come up with a way of further defining "intermittent" to distinguish between seasonal and ephemeral flow patterns. Based on other responses on this thread maybe:

waterway=*
intermittent=yes/no (default assumption of "no")
intermittent:frequency=winter/spring/summer/fall/seasonal/ephemeral/unknown (default assumption of "unknown")

Tod