[Talk-us] Fwd: Re: National Forest "nature_reserve"?

[stevea]

>Steve,
>
>         Interesting discussion. But, I have one question. After all
>that, how do I code a national forest?
>
>Charlotte

I continue to believe it is correct to tag landuse=forest on USFS 
boundaries.  And while I have tagged leisure=nature_reserve on 
Wilderness boundaries in the past, I also agree that is becoming a 
bit old-fashioned, especially in light of the newer protected_area 
schema evolving.  So while I don't believe that 
leisure=nature_reserve is strictly wrong on Wilderness (yet), I agree 
with Greg Troxel that landuse=conservation on Wilderness is better, 
especially as it omits by exclusion the same tag (landuse) being set 
to forest on Wilderness -- which truly is not forest.

As it is a newer tagging schema, I have begun additionally tagging 
with boundary=protected_area and protect_class=1b on Wilderness.  On 
USFS boundaries, I add (to landuse=forest) boundary=protected_area 
and protect_class=6.

I also agree with this well-worded statement by Greg Troxel:  "every 
bit of land, eventually, should have a landuse= tag, and () landuse 
values should have some sort of mutually exclusive and jointly 
exhaustive coverage."  His reasoning (consistency, "just read it," 
otherwise you have to know about protected_area subcases and infer 
what landuse is) is spot on.

So, a landuse tag PLUS protected_area/protect_class tags seem to hold 
us in good stead for the present.  Tag forest and 6 for USFS and 
conservation and 1b for Wilderness.  However, do pay attention to 
"subtle nuances" like "Protect classes for various countries" and the 
evolution of change in this schema.  The wiki is a rich source of 
usually up-to-date documentation (and even has Discussion pages).

Of course, I'm no expert or ultimate authority, just another 
volunteer paying attention to an evolving set of tags and new schemas 
which attempt to do a better job of capturing accurate semantics in a 
complex world.

SteveA
California