[Tagging] Fwd: Re: Forest parcel with other landcover (scrub, scree…): how to map?

[Kevin Kenny]

 On Wed, Jan 23, 2019 at 5:20 PM Graeme Fitzpatrick
<graemefitz1 at gmail.com> wrote:
>> From that perspective, maple trees for syrup are a different problem.  Possibly still nice
>> to be able to map in some way,
>
>
> Would / could they be covered under =orchard: https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Tag:landuse%3Dorchard
>
> I'll openly admit that I know nothing about how maple trees are grown - are they in a clump / plantation or spread out s individual trees through the woods?

Around here, the low-elevation forest is naturally 'mixed deciduous',
with beech, maple, birch, ash and black cherry predominant but many
other species present. (Alas, the elms and chestnuts are nearly
extinct.) A sugar bush starts off as a natural forest that has a high
proportion of maples, and over time, the grower will often harvest the
competing species and use the wood to fire the evaporator, so it
gradually evolves over decades to something that is more nearly a
monoculture. It is more like making use of a natural wood that happens
to have a lot of maple trees than it is like a plantation.

Few sugar bushes stay in business for generations, so often the forest
reverts to a more natural-like state after a producer has ceased
operations.

Modern sugar bushes are pretty obvious on the ground, because
collecting sap in buckets and gathering it in a barrel on a waggon (or
lorry) is nowadays done mostly for the tourists to gawk at. A
producing sugar bush will have plumbing everywhere to gather the sap.
Most producers will leave the tubing in place year-round and hook up
the taps in late winter, which is the sugaring season.
https://danielsonssugarbush.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/trees_with_tubes.jpg.
In that picture I can see beech and grey birch as well as maple -
obviously the other trees aren't tapped. (Although there's a small
specialty market for birch syrup, which some producers use as a
flavouring and sugar source in root beer.)