[Talk-us] Tagging National Forests

Tue May 10 17:29:21 UTC 2016

Thanks for the continued discussion. It seems that one of you removed the
offending landuse that I mentioned in my email yesterday (from an import
that was not attributed). As a result, the tiles have begun to regen, and
we can now see the beautiful, detailed forest tracing that someone did
around the ski slopes. This is an example of why blanketing a few hundred
thousand square miles is not appropriate. Here is a screenshot:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/7xgtiodzjvhq1l4/2016-05-10%2013_14_51-OpenStreetMap.png?dl=0

Now, I gave this some more thought, and I do tend to agree with Steve A
that landuse=forest indicates an area designated by humans for a particular
use. For instance, landuse=residential is used to define an area that is
residential in nature, landuse=cemetery is a cemetery. Keeping with that
trend, I think that the semantics of the tag are aligned with a managed
forest. That said, we need to document this and then move to start using a
new set of tags for landcover=*, to map areas covered with whatever it is,
regardless of whether humans put them there or not. landcover=trees,
landcover=grass, landcover=rocks, etc. These tags could be on
landuse=forest areas, or alone. I think we should resurrect the landcover
proposal!

Next step would be change landuse=forest to landcover=trees where
appropriate.

That is the only way I think we as a community can hope to resolve this.

Thanks,

Elliott

On Mon, May 9, 2016 at 7:53 PM Russell Deffner <russdeffner at gmail.com>
wrote:

> 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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>
-- 
Elliott Plack
http://elliottplack.me
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