[Talk-GB] Landuse or natural wood?

[Craig Wallace]

On 12/01/2010 19:04, Dave F. wrote:
> Hi
>
> I was told many years ago that there was no such thing as a natural wood
> in the UK.
> All areas of trees have, in some way been manipulated by man. Such as
> planting, deforestation, pruning,&  being used to make garden furniture
> for the middle classes.
>
> I think that all woods should be tagged with landuse=
>
> Disappointingly, I think many have been tagged as natural= because they
> appear green within Potlatch (as apposed to grey)&  appear in some
> renderings whereas landuse= doesn't (Cyclemap for instance).
>
> One person on these forums said it should be natural=, because a tree is
> natural. However, to me that's just plain silly.
>
> Opinions welcomed.

This has been discussed before, including a huge thread on the talk list 
a few months back. Starting here: 
http://lists.openstreetmap.org/pipermail/talk/2009-July/thread.html#38736
I think the conclusion from that thread was the current tagging is 
confusing, but I'm not sure if there was much agreement on how to 
improve it.

Anyway, originally there was 2 tags:
natural=wood - for (mostly) unmanaged areas of trees/woods/forest
landuse=forest - for managed areas of trees/woods/forest

The landuse=wood tag is more recent, and seems to be somewhere in 
between. ie for somewhat managed trees.
But this tag is not as well supported by the editors or renderers, and 
has hardly any usage compared to the other two.

Some people have also suggested other meanings, eg a wood is a small 
area of trees, a forest is a large area. But that's not very helpful IMO.

I think the simplest option is just to have one tag for any area of 
trees/wood/forest (eg natural=trees).
Then use extra tags for whether or not it is managed, what it is used 
for (lumber, recreation etc), plus what type of trees it is etc.

Craig