[Talk-us] Tagging National Forests

[Eric Ladner]

On Mon, Aug 17, 2015 at 6:18 PM Mike Thompson <miketho16 at gmail.com> wrote:

> The common meaning of "forest" is "a large tract of land covered with
> trees and underbrush; woodland"[1] However, many parts of US National
> Forests do not have trees, and either will never have trees, or will not
> have them for many decades, and therefore are not "forested"
> * Many ski resorts are within National Forests, e.g. [3]. Areas occupied
> by buildings, parking lots and most ski runs do not have trees and are not
> likely to for many years.
> * Areas above treeline do not have trees and will probably not have trees
> for centuries.
> * Meadows, prairies, lakes/reservoirs, areas of scree and mines[4] are all
> found within National Forests and no or few trees will exist in these areas
>
> Therefore significant parts of National Forests are not being "used" as a
> "forest" and tagging them as "landuse=forest" is not appropriate in my
> opinion.
>

+1

boundary=protected_area is more appropriate.

Modoc National Forest has large swaths of land (compare [1] and [2]) that
is not covered by trees, managed or not.  Tagging the whole area as
"landuse=forest" doesn't reflect what's actually on the ground.

I agree with an earlier poster (apologies, I forgot who) who suggested
replacing landuse=forest with landuse=timber.  "timber" has a more
unambiguous meaning than "forest"

[1] http://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=16/41.8233/-121.0963
[2] http://binged.it/1NCIf0Q
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