[Talk-us] Tagging National Forests

[Russell Deffner]

Hi Steve and all,

 

I think you are correct that we’re trying to build consensus, I think this is a good time to review the ‘OSM best practices/rule(s) of thumb’.  I would counter-argue that a ‘blanket use of landuse=forest’ does not meet the ‘verifiable rule/guideline’ [1]; it’s not something you can easily observe when there is not active timber harvesting. Also, we know that not only is National Forest land used for timber production, but also mushroom/berry harvesting, hunting, recreation, etc., etc. – so we also should not ‘blanket’ national forest with other tags, but try to accurately/verifiably show things. If you look at the discussion page for the proposed landcover features [2] it is a good representative of many of these ‘natural’ vs. landuse vs. vegetation cover, etc. As I have said in previous threads on this topic – please have patience with Pike National Forest – I’ve been working on this and have verified that Pike does not allow timber harvesting except by permit in very small designation sub-sections of the forest, which rotate/change frequently, so unless we are talking about ‘importing those boundaries’ then I’m slowly working on tagging ‘forested’/areas with trees as natural=wood (i.e. that I believe meets ‘verifiability’ – i.e. you can pretty well see forest edge/tree line in imagery).

=Russ

 

[1] http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Verifiability

[2] http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Talk:Proposed_features/landcover 

 

From: OSM Volunteer stevea [mailto:steveaOSM at softworkers.com] 
Sent: Monday, May 09, 2016 3:29 PM
To: talk-us at openstreetmap.org
Subject: Re: [Talk-us] Tagging National Forests

 

Mike Thompson writes:

1) I don't know how anyone would able to tell this from simple on the ground observation.

 

Granted:  from an on-the-ground observation, a landuse=forest might look very much like a natural=wood.  However, if you saw that part of the area had some stumps, you could safely conclude it is not natural=wood (unless there was "illegal logging” going on, and that DOES happen) but rather that it is landuse=forest.  THEN, there is where you know for a fact (from facts not on-the-ground, but perhaps from ownership data, signage like “Welcome to Sierra National Forest” or other sources) that THIS IS a real, live forest, in the sense OSM intends to mean here (landuse=forest implies timber harvesting now or at some point in the future).

 

2) While the English word "natural" might suggest this, we use "natural" for other things that man has a hand in creating or modifying, e.g. natural=water for a man made reservoir.

 

Again, I’ll grant you this, but it only shows that OSM’s tagging is not always internally consistent.  I can live with that.  What is required (and “more clear" in the case of natural=water) is the understanding that consensus has emerged for natural=water:  this gets tagged on bodies of water which are both natural and man-made, and that’s OK, and we don’t lose sleep over it or look for more consistency.  It’s like an exception to a rule of grammar:  you just learn it, and say “shucks” that there are such things as grammatical exceptions.

 

I’m doing my very best to listen, and it seems many others are, too.  Listening is the heart of building consensus.  Let us not also become entrenched in minor exceptions or established conventions adding further confusion when identifying them as such actually can help us achieve more clarity.

 

SteveA

California

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