[Tagging] Tag for a plateau or tableland?

[Paul Johnson]

On Thu, Apr 18, 2019 at 5:13 PM Joseph Eisenberg <joseph.eisenberg at gmail.com>
wrote:

> Fri, Apr 19, 2019 at 7:.
>
>> I was wondering about leaving them all under peak?
>>
>> natural=peak
>> peak=hill/mountain/plateau/butte/mesa
>>
>> Would that work?
>>
>
> A peak is well defined as the local high point. A Mesa or butte will
> always have at least one peak, but the peak may be in one corner, which
> could be several kilometers from the center of a mesa, and a Mesa might
> have a dozen different peaks around it.
>
> Similarly, one named natural=ridge can have a dozen peaks, sometime with
> different names.
>
> Those Australian geological definitions are good, and match the American
> ones that I found. A Mesa and Butte are both bordered by an escarpment
> (cliff), while a “plateau” can also just be an elevated level area without
> cliffs.
>
> Since buttes are small they can usually be tagged just as a peak, but
> mesas need a tag for the center of the area.
>

That makes mapping things like Black Mesa
<https://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=13/36.9695/-103.0627&layers=C>
interesting... spanning the Oklahoma-New Mexico border, seems like an area
outline around the outside of the tabletop would be a good idea.  (Link
goes to OpenCycleMap, the contour lines don't quite pack together in a way
that properly shows how dramatic it looks on satellite).  I have no idea
what the peak point in New Mexico labeled Black Mesa represents (possibly
the highest spot on the mesa's tabletop, but I recognize the one in
Oklahoma as being probably more logically tagged as a tourism attraction or
monument since it's not so much a peak as it is a slightly high prominence
on the top of Black Mesa that happens to be the highest spot in the State
of Oklahoma, even if it's not the highest spot on the top of Black Mesa.
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