[Talk-GB] Mapping of Kielder Forest(s)

[Nick]

Hi Russ

Looking at the example you provided, it seems to me that the use of 
smaller blocks may have been selected as representing compartments or 
sub-compartments. In which case the tag boundary=forest_compartment and 
ref:= or similar might have been helpful as a management tool but also 
for the public to be able to refer to (e.g. reporting any concerns or 
sightings).

Cheers

Nick


On 30/08/2021 19:59, Russ Garrett via Talk-GB wrote:
> Hi James,
>
> First off I would like to emphasise that I am not suggesting the
> removal of any detail here.
>
> I am suggesting that small gaps in the forest should not be
> represented by gaps in the forest polygons, but should be replaced
> with man_made=cutline (and/or a highway tag), which would reduce the
> number of individual landuse polygons. Larger gaps (such as the old
> farmsteads, etc) should certainly be preserved, potentially as holes
> in a multipolygon.
>
> On Sun, 29 Aug 2021 at 19:53, James Derrick <lists at jamesderrick.org> wrote:
>> This detail was added to give information to walkers and riders (horse/
>> pony/ fit mountain bikers) where access may be easier - walking along a
>> forestry haul road is easy; across the ridges created by a commercial
>> planting machine is very hard.
> Ideally in OSM this should be communicated via highway ways - probably
> by highway=track - and this would allow additional useful info on
> surface quality to be added. The gaps between landuse polygons are not
> necessarily indicative of a passable route in OSM (although they are
> in OS StreetView). I've visited Kielder Forest several times so I
> appreciate that a lot of these gaps may not be passable by vehicle or
> even on foot.
>
>> I can see that adding a master relation to bring individual stands of
>> landuse=forest trees together could be useful, however where do you
>> start and stop?
>>
>> The Forestry Commission signage on the ground suggests they manage the
>> wider landscape with areas / plantations / species collectively known by
>> several names, not just Kielder.
>>
>> Do you have access to this level of hierarchical data (I don't even with
>> ground survey, beyond specific areas - e.g. Hawkhirst, Bakefin) or are
>> you suggesting one level of "Kielder"?
> I was trying to avoid this discussion, which I think is a separate
> issue, but I will summarise it briefly: Forestry England does
> designate these as 13 separate forests (all of which are considered
> part of Kielder Forest), and they have a rather interesting set of
> plans available on their website:
>
> https://www.forestryengland.uk/forest-planning/kielder-forest-plans
>
> Unfortunately these plans appear to be encumbered by OS copyright, so
> we can't use them in OSM. (There is quite a lot of open-licensed
> Forestry England data, but seemingly not anything with the actual
> names of the forests.)
>
> I'm not suggesting that the entire area should be tagged as "Kielder
> Forest". To start with, I was planning to roughly group these based on
> the naming visible on OS StreetView. The way OS names the forests
> appears to be slightly different from the way that Forestry England
> names them - Forestry England has names for various sections of forest
> around Kielder Water which OS just calls "Kielder Forest" - but I
> think this might align better to how they're interpreted on the ground
> anyway.
>
> At any rate, these areas aren't really named in any sensible way at
> the moment. My primary intention with this was to try and make sure
> they are. This can always be tweaked later.
>
>> My general approach is to map from imagery, but do recognise from my own
>> walks on the ground that areas may be clear felled and appear barren.
>> These typically are replanted relatively quickly (in the 10-20 year
>> lifetime of a softwood tree) and rarely change use (e.g. continued
>> forest, not meadow) due to the physical geography (terrain, altitude,
>> thin rocky soils).
>>
>> By breaking the overall forest into individual stands of landuse=forest,
>> it seems relatively simple to change the status of one area as it changes.
> I don't think it's particularly realistic to try and keep up with the
> state of each individual part of the forest. If this was the case then
> it could potentially be worth keeping it mapped at a more granular
> scale, but I think this is a losing battle. From what I've seen so
> far, a lot of what is mapped in OSM is already out of date compared to
> the newest Bing imagery.
>
> Personally think that it's fine to keep even a recently-felled area
> tagged as "forest". It will be re-planted soon enough, and may even
> already have been if you're operating off aerial imagery.
>
> Cheers,
>
> --
> Russ Garrett
> russ at garrett.co.uk
>
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