[Talk-us] Proposed import cleanup: NYSDEClands
Kevin Kenny
kevin.b.kenny+osm at gmail.com
Wed Jun 15 00:24:05 UTC 2016
Now that I'm done with the NYC DEP Watershed Recreation Areas import,
I've got some bandwidth to spend on this cleanup again.
MECHANICAL EDITING
I've come to the conclusion that a 'mechanical edit' is appropriate
only in the sense that I will have a program providing me with
suggested geometry and tags. I'll need to go through all the edits
individually, because very few of the areas have actually survived
unchanged from the original import. Most of the changes appear to have
been from what Frederik Ramm referred to as 'drive-by mapping' -
armchair mappers silencing warnings from automated tools - but they
still need to be vetted individually. Moreover, there are various
weird tagging inconsistencies, such as conflicting tags between ways
in a relation, or between the ways and the relation itself.
PROTECTED_AREA
I'm going to maintain the protected_area tagging close to what I
specified below, except that 'Wild Forest,' 'Detached Parcel' and
'Unclassified' will all be upgraded to protect_class=1b. The only
significant differences between these and Wilderness is that slightly
more intensive use is allowed in Wild Forests. Nevertheless, it is
expected that those who enter the Wild Forests will have the skills
and equipment to operate on their own. About the only concessions that
they will find are hardened trail surfaces (NOT paved - but with more
erosion prevention than would be typical in Wilderness), the
occasional marked campsite (with no amenities other than brush
clearance and possibly a privy) and, in rare and exceptional cases,
permission to ride a mountain bike, horse, ATV or snowmobile.
LANDUSE (or leisure=nature_reserve, or landuse=forest, or
natural=wood, or landcover=trees, or what?)
I'm still in a quandary about how to tag the land use, because nothing
makes much sense.
leisure=nature_reserve at least renders, and is consistent with the
actual management - which ls largely, 'protect from encroachment, and
let Nature take her course.' The Wiki suggests that nature_reserve
ought to be used for relatively small areas and that
boundary=national_park might be more appropriate for these large ones.
Since the lands in question are located within the Adirondack and
Catskill parks (which exist as a public and private partnership), and
the outer boundaries of these immense parks are already tagged
'boundary=national_park', having something else designate the specific
land use seems appropriate, and nature_reserve seems as good as
anything, even if the High Peaks Wilderness is, at 832 square
kilometers, small in any sense other than relative to the Adirondack
Park's over 24,000 square kilometers. My inclination is to go with
this tag.
Most of the lands are at present tagged landuse=forest. This appears,
to me, to be incorrect. They are not managed for the production of
forest products. On the contrary, timber harvest is forbidden there in
perpetuity. The big advantage is that it renders with a pretty green
overlay, with trees.
natural=wood or landcover=trees are just plain wrong. There are woods,
fens and bogs, meadows, scrublands, and even some amount of
high-alpine tundra and bare rock. And I'm not about to tag what's
what. I get that information from the National Landcover Dataset when
I want to render a map.
landuse=conservation is formally deprecated.
I fall back on leisure=nature_reserve unless someone screams.
INFORMALITY
Since this is not a new import, and since all changes will be reviewed
(yes, I know it's a big job, but I can take it a few at a time in idle
moments and get it done in weeks to months), I don't plan to go
through an extensive formal review. I'll wikify what I'm doing and run
it by this list again before I start, but I consider this to be more
along the lines of manual editing to clean up a
less-than-ideally-executed import than of a massive mechanical edit to
conduct an import. I'l post again and allow a few days comment before
I start editing in earnest, again, just in case there are screams of
protest.
On Wed, May 25, 2016 at 2:04 PM, Kevin Kenny
<kevin.b.kenny+osm at gmail.com> wrote:
> I've been continuing to investigate the NYS DEC Lands file, because,
> as Paul Norman identified, the original import is not up to current
> OSM standards. I'm not going to apologize for reimporting - a reimport
> will surely leave less of a mess than what is there!
>
> It's become clear to me that for most of these lands, and certainly
> for the entirety of the Forest Preserve, leisure=nature_reserve is a
> correct description for legacy renderers. landuse=forest is
> emphatically not correct. These lands are not used for timber
> production. natural=wood may or may not be correct, depending on
> landcover. boundary=national_park would also be semantically close for
> the Forest Preserve lands, except that the Forest Preserve is not
> administered at the national level.
>
> It would be desirable to include boundary=protected_area for these
> parcels, since all of them enjoy some sort of legal conservation
> protection, and the Forest Preserve lands enjoy extremely strong
> protection - stronger than the US National Parks. If we include this,
> it's also desirable to include a protect_class. IUCN's web site
> describes all these lands as class VI. The description of class 6,
> nevertheless, does not fit the Forest Preserve. It might fit the
> Adirondack and Catskill Parks in their entirety, where sustainable use
> of natural resources is the goal. The State-owned lands within the
> parks, however, are conserved to a much stricter standard.
>
> The purpose of this writeup is to review New York State's land
> classification scheme and attempt to assign appropriate protect_class
> for the lands, in hopes of not creating yet another mess for someone
> else to clean up down the road.
>
> Feel free to scroll all the way down to the summary if you don't care
> to follow the arguments for each decision. The summary gives
> protect_class and protection_object for each classification of State
> land.
>
>
> 1. THE FOREST PRESERVE
> ======================
>
> New York's Forest Preserve was created in 1894 by Article XIV of the
> New York State Constitution. Its original wording still stands:
>
> The lands of the State, now owned or hereafter acquired,
> constituting the Forest Preserve as now fixed by law, shall be
> forever kept as wild forest lands. They shall not be leased, sold
> or exchanged, or be taken by any corporation, public or private,
> nor shall the timber thereon be sold, removed or destroyed.
> http://www.dec.ny.gov/lands/55849.html
>
> It has been amended with many codicils, but in fact remains as strong
> as ever. The amendments still must be placed on the ballot by a
> supermajority of both houses of the state legislature in two sessions
> with a general election intervening, and then presented as a popular
> referendum. I can remember one election where there were six such
> measures on the ballot, all widely supported by both development
> advocates and conservationists. The consensus arose from the fact that
> both sides got something: the Forest Preserve was expanded while the
> lost land served an economic purpose. One typical example was that the
> Sagamore Institute, a non-profit educational foundation, was allowed
> to take title to ten acres containing historic buildings (placing them
> under unitary ownership) on condition that the site would be conserved
> as a historic site and remain open to the public - in return for two
> hundred acres of wild forest land.
>
> The Forest Preserve comprises the State-owned lands within the
> Catskill and Adirondack Parks. The line fixed by the 1894 law defining
> the parks is often called the Blue Line because it is traditionally
> drawn in blue on maps of New York State. It also includes several
> 'detached parcels' that are outside the Blue Line but still located in
> the counties that contain the Forest Preserve. These parcels enjoy the
> same constitutional protection.
>
> The State-owned lands in the Forest Preserve fall in several
> administrative categories.
> http://www.dec.ny.gov/lands/7811.html
>
> A. WILDERNESS
>
> The formal definition is found at the above URL. It is close to the
> IUCN definition of Class Ib and the Federal definition of Wilderness
> Area. It is "an area where the Earth and its community of life are
> untrammeled by Man - where Man himself is a visitor who does not
> remain." It cannot be class Ia, because public access is unrestricted.
> Ordinarily, a parcel will be designated as Wilderness only
> if it is at least ten thousand acres (4500 ha) in extent; preserving
> smaller parcels in an unimpaired condition is usually impracticable.
>
> Wilderness areas constitute 1.3 million acres (2100 square miles,
> 5400 km**2) of the lands in question.
>
> I would suggest that Wilderness ought to be protect_class=1.
>
> B. PRIMITIVE, PRIMITIVE BICYCLE CORRIDOR, CANOE
>
> All of these are essentially the same as Wilderness. In the case of
> Primitive Areas, there is usually some existing nonconformant use that
> cannot be removed on a fixed timetable or are adjacent to private
> lands that are sufficiently influential that wilderness designation
> cannot be supported. Primitive bicycle corridors are managed as
> Wilderness, with the single exception that mountain bicycles are
> permitted. The mountain bicycle trails are not made "smooth" but are
> left in a rocky and rough condition, recommended only for expert
> riders. The corridors provide riders with a unique experience of
> solitude in terrain that is still accessible. Finally, Canoe Areas are
> wilderness areas where the number and proximity of watercourses allow
> for waterborne recreation in an essentially wilderness setting.
>
> I'd suggest that these areas, as well, be protect_class=1. Permitting
> a bicycle or a canoe does not significantly detract from the
> 'wilderness' character and is chiefly an administrative decision.
>
> These areas are a much less significant fraction of the total,
> constituting roughly 59,000 acres (93 square miles, 240 km**2).
>
> C. WILD FOREST
>
> "A wild forest area is an area where the resources permit a somewhat
> higher degree of human use than in wilderness, primitive or canoe
> areas, while retaining an essentially wild character." It offers a
> lesser sense of remoteness than a Wilderness area and supports a
> variety of outdoor recreation. Wild Forests may have ATV and
> snowmobile trails, MAPPWD (Motorized Access Program for Persons With
> Disabilities), bridle paths, and similar opportunities. Nevertheless,
> it still enjoys the same protection under Article XIV of the State
> Constitution as a Wilderness. It has a fundamentally wild
> character.
>
> Wild Forest lands encompass roughly 1.5 million acres (2300 square
> miles, 5900 km**2). In addition, the Forest Preserve Detached Parcels
> are managed as Wild Forest, adding roughly 12,000 acres (18 square
> miles, 4800 ha) to the total.
>
> I'd argue that protect_class=2 is appropriate for Wild Forest. They
> enjoy stricter legal protection than any of the National Parks. They
> do not have developed tourist facilities the way the National Parks
> do. The chief difference is that they may permit motorized
> recreation. (I think a case could be made that they are also
> Wilderness Areas under the definitions in
> http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Tag:boundary%3Dprotected_area,
> but, when in doubt, I'm down-rating the classification.)
>
> D. INTENSIVE USE
>
> Intensive Use Areas provide high-density accommodations, and include
> campgrounds, day use areas (parks, swimming beaches, etc.), fishing
> access sites, ski resorts and visitor information centers. They are
> managed with the intent of keeping the land use sustainable and in
> character with the surrounding forest. They, too, enjoy constitutional
> protection against the State selling off the land or timber.
>
> protect_class=2 appears appropriate to these, by analogy to similarly
> developed areas in the National Parks. Depending on use, they may also
> have a different leisure= or landuse= tag (such as leisure=park or
> landuse=winter_sports).
>
> Intensive use areas total roughly 29,000 acres (46 square miles, 120
> km**2).
>
> E. MISCELLANEOUS
>
> There are other categories of land within the Forest Preserve:
>
> Administrative (administrative offices, ranger stations, fish
> hatcheries, research laboratories, wastewater treatment plants,
> prisons, and highway maintenance depots). I propose not to reimport
> these.
>
> Historic: These are specific historic sites, and are small in extent,
> totaling about 500 acres (less than 1 square mile, 200 hectares). They
> are well represented by protect_class=22 protection_object=historic
> heritage=4 (or heritage=2 for sites on the National Register of
> Historic Places).
>
> Transport corridor: Lands directly adjoining railroads, highways and
> power lines. These should not be imported.
>
> Unclassified: This divides into two subtypes: recently acquired land
> in the Forest Preserve not yet classified, and underwater
> areas. Underwater areas should not be imported; newly-acquired lands
> in the Forest Preserve will be protect_class=2 since we know that they
> will enjoy no less strict protection.
>
> 2. OUTSIDE THE FOREST PRESERVE
> ==============================
>
> The State also owns conservation lands outside the Forest Preserve.
>
> Forest and wild life conservation are hereby declared to be
> policies of the State. For the purpose of carrying out such
> policies the Legislature may appropriate monies for the
> acquisition by the state of land, outside of the Adirondack and
> Catskill Parks as now fixed by law, for the practice of forest or
> wild life conservation.
>
> and
>
> The legislature shall further provide for the acquisition of lands
> and waters, including improvements thereon and any interest
> therein, outside the forest preserve counties, and the dedication
> of properties so acquired or now owned, which because of their
> natural beauty, wilderness character, or geological, ecological or
> historical significance, shall be preserved and administered for
> the use and enjoyment of the people.
> http://www.dec.ny.gov/lands/55849.html
>
> A. State Forests (Reforestation Areas)
>
> These are working forests and exist for multiple purposes, including
> watershed protection, timber production, and recreation. They total
> roughly 790,000 acres (1200 square miles, 3200 km**2).
>
> For these working forests, protect_class=6 protection_object=forest
> seems ideal. These are the tracts that are analogous to state forests
> in other states.
>
> B. State Multiple Use Areas
>
> These are forests that are preserved for outdoor recreation: camping,
> fishing, hunting, boating, winter sports. Where possible, their
> management also includes preservation of scenery, conservation and
> development of natural resources, watershed protection and
> reforestation.
>
> I do not have separate statistics for these areas; they are rolled up
> under 'State Forest' on http://www.dec.ny.gov/lands/59645.html.
>
> protect_class=21 protection_object=recreation seems appropriate.
>
> C. State Unique Areas, State Nature and Historic Preserves
>
> "A parcel of land owned by the state acquired due to its special
> natural beauty, wilderness character, or for its geological,
> ecological or historical significance for the state nature and
> historical preserve"
> http://www.dec.ny.gov/lands/7811.html#II_State_Forests
>
> These areas may be used by the public for recreation, and often
> provide a field laboratory for observation and education related to
> the unique characteristics of the area.
>
> Once again, I don't have separate statistics for Unique Areas.
>
> protect_class=6 seems appropriate. There isn't an easy way to automate
> protection_object on these areas, but they are few in number and could
> easily be tagged manually.
>
> D. Wildlife Management Areas
>
> These lands are managed for the production of fish and wildlife for
> the enjoyment of sportsmen and -women.
>
> There are nearly 200,000 acres (310 square miles, 800 km**2) of these.
>
> protect_class=14 protection_object=species appears appropriate.
>
> E. Conservation Easements
>
> These are lands remaining in private hands where the State has
> purchased certain rights, preventing the owner from developing the
> land or putting it to a nonconforming use.
>
> There are roughly 900,000 acres (1400 square miles, 3700 km**2) of
> land subject to conservation easements. Ordinarily, these parcels
> should not be imported. The twenty-two properties listed at the bottom
> of http://www.dec.ny.gov/lands/41156.html are exceptions that can be
> addressed manually on a case-by-case basis.
>
> 3. Summary
>
> The following is a mapping ordered by protect_class of the types of
> land falling under the given class:
>
> Class Types
>
> Nature-protected area:
>
> 1 Wilderness Area, Primitive Area, Canoe Area, Primitive Bicycle
> Corridor
> protection_object=nature
>
> Example: High Peaks Wilderness
>
> 2 Wild Forest, Intensive Use Area, Forest Preserve Detached
> Parcel, Unclassified Area (above water only)
> protection_object=nature
>
> Examples: Saranac Lakes Wild Forest, Lake Durant State
> Campground, Belle Ayre Ski Center,
> Boreas Ponds Tract
>
> 6 State Forest, State Reforestation Area, State Unique Area
> protection_object=forest
>
> Examples: Burnt-Rossman Hills State Forest,
> Neversink State Unique Area
>
> Resources-protected area:
>
> 14 Wildlife Management Area
> protection_object=species
>
> Example: Partridge Run State Wildlife Management Area
>
> Social-protected area:
>
> 21 State Multiple Use Area
> protection_object=recreation
>
> Example: Depot Hill State Multiple Use Area
>
> 22 Historic Area
> protection_object=heritage
>
> Example: Camp Santanoni State Historic Area
>
> Not to be imported:
>
> none Administrative, Special Use, Education
>
> If the consensus is that this tagging makes sense, I'll update
> http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Tag:boundary%3Dprotected_area to
> add these elements to the table - indicating that they are specific to
> New York, since New York's conservation laws are unique.
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