[Talk-us] Water in bays, harbors, etc.

[Tod Fitch]

During a day kayaking I noticed that the OSM map in the area was less than perfect so I thought I’d see what I could do to improve it. But I have not worked on this type of feature very much and am a little uncertain of some tagging details.

The area is a “back bay”, a tidal area with some channels and tidal wetlands a bit inland from a developed small boat harbor. In this area the land/water boundary has been tagged with “natural=coastline”[1]. When looking at other similar areas I’ve been to, it seems that the “natural=coastline” is not taken as far inland and the harbor and estuary areas are tagged with "natural=water”[2]. I am wondering which is the preferred method of tagging.


Thanks!

[1] http://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=16/33.6201/-117.8968
[2] http://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=16/36.8100/-121.7859