[Talk-us] Tagging National Forests

[Bradley White]

Just to add my two cents, I do not think that "landuse=forest" should be
tagged with national forest boundaries. That something is within a national
forest boundary does not guarantee that it is a managed forest, or even
that it has tree cover. A 'national forest' is more an administrative
boundary to me than anything - it designates an area with active federal
management and a stricter set of laws involving development, etc. Half of
Reno, NV where I reside is technically inside the Humboldt-Toiyabe National
Forest boundary, including the urban center. There is certainly nothing
that qualifies as a 'forest' here in the traditional sense. Even many
parcels just outside of urbanized areas of Reno that are both within the
national forest boundary and owned by the forest service have no tree cover
whatsoever, and couldn't possibly qualify for any definition of a forest
involving trees.

Personally I think the problem here is a poor definition of
'landuse=forest'. Does this mean land used for timber production? I see a
lot of on-the-ground verifiability issues with that sort of definition.
Should it imply a large, managed area of trees? As explained earlier, there
are many federally owned and managed 'national forest' areas with no tree
cover whatsoever. I would be partial to a definition of 'land owned
directly managed by a forestry service' - forestry land - but then mapping
something like that would require parcel-level imports since not every
piece of land owned by the forest service is clearly marked on the ground.

I personally only use 'natural=wood' anymore, since at the very least it is
easy to verify that trees exist. I don't care much for the 'original
growth' definition of 'natural=tree' either due to verifiability issues.
Much of the Lake Tahoe is second-growth forest, but without a forestry
degree I don't see the average mapper being able to tell where
second-growth starts and stops.
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