[Tagging] landuse meadow getting the right description emphases

Joseph Eisenberg joseph.eisenberg at gmail.com
Tue Mar 17 01:07:52 UTC 2020


> there are 'ice meadows' along rivers and streams, where there's no tree or shrub cover because the banks are swept with ice in the spring floods - they have their own community of low-growing plants that can tolerate that treatment and are often found nowhere else.

Are these plants grasses and other herbaceous and annual plants? If
so, perhaps these are a wetland=marsh? Or they might be a wetland=fen
if there are mosses? Or are they not actually wetlands, but rather are
dry ground in the summer?

https://www.adirondackalmanack.com/2019/06/rare-plants-inhabit-adirondack-ice-meadows.html

On 3/17/20, Kevin Kenny <kevin.b.kenny at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Mon, Mar 16, 2020 at 1:46 AM Joseph Eisenberg
> <joseph.eisenberg at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> In American English, especially in the west, the word “meadow” is used for
>> areas in the high mountains which grow grasses, sedges, annual wildflowers
>> etc in the summer months after the snow melts. They might occasionally be
>> used to graze cattle as rangeland, but usually are only graced by elk.
>>
>> I think these would be called a “fell” in parts of Britain, but they are
>> somewhat similar to alpine meadows / pastures in the Swiss/Austrian alps,
>> where dairy cattle graze in the summer. Those really are pastures or hay
>> meadows, so perhaps Americans we got that usage from Swiss and Austrian
>> immigrants, and applied it to mountain grasslands?
>>
>> I agree that alpine “meadows” should be tagged natural=grassland, but
>> don’t be surprised to find some mapped as “landuse=meadow” in the
>> mountains of California and Colorado.
>
> There are also 'wet meadows' - wetlands with sodden soil, but with
> neither standing water nor tree cover. I've seen the scrubby ones
> called 'laurel meadows' or 'alder meadows' according to the plant
> community.  And there are 'ice meadows' along rivers and streams,
> where there's no tree or shrub cover because the banks are swept with
> ice in the spring floods - they have their own community of
> low-growing plants that can tolerate that treatment and are often
> found nowhere else.
>
> Yes, these should be tagged as `natural=wetland wetland=wet_meadow`.
> or `natural=scrub`, or (I can't find a good tag for ice meadows but
> haven't tried to map any yet).
>
> --
> 73 de ke9tv/2, Kevin
>
> _______________________________________________
> Tagging mailing list
> Tagging at openstreetmap.org
> https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/tagging
>



More information about the Tagging mailing list