[Tagging] Coastline for rivers, estuaries and mangroves?

[Graeme Fitzpatrick]

On Mon, 10 Sep 2018 at 17:45, Colin Smale <colin.smale at xs4all.nl> wrote:

> Graeme,
>
> You suggest that coastline and baseline might be the same thing.
>
I'm not disagreeing with you, Colin, just trying to make sense of the whole
thing! :-)

It appears that Florida has decided that they do match, but as Martin &
Warin pointed out, sometimes that just doesn't work - I've seen the same
thing near here in Australia, where the baseline cuts across the mouth of a
bay, so that a few '00 klm's of "coast" aren't included.

One thing I would think though, using the often-referenced cry of local
knowledge ...

Go anywhere in the World, walk up to a River & ask the local standing there
fishing what it's course is.

I'm pretty certain that you'll be told that "It rises back up there in the
Hinterland, comes down across the plain here & runs out to Sea at River
Heads" or similar.

I'd be very (!) surprised if anybody (except a very dedicated OSM mapper!)
would start detailing that it rises as a spring, which forms a rivulet,
becomes a stream, then a river (or creek?) which then becomes a tidal
inlet, with the tide reaching 11.5 klms upstream? No, I think they'd say
we're standing here on the riverbank & the mouth of the river is down
there, where it reaches the sea?

If the USA has defined the word "coastline" to mean "baseline", what term
> does it use for the coastline in a geographic sense?
>
Sorry, no idea?


> We will need to be a little pragmatic, because OSM mappers are never going
> to be able to do a proper survey of the coastline
>
I agree, but we also can't easily say where the tidal limit reaches?

> but that is a separate issue to the COASTLINE discussion.
>
Maybe, but personally, I still think that the river banks shouldn't be
marked as coastline, & that the coastline should cut across the river at
the coast, so I guess we may agree to continue disagreeing :-)

Thanks

Graeme
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