[Talk-us] Heavily-wooded residential polygons

Fri May 29 00:12:55 UTC 2020

>  beekeeping, wild mushroom harvesting, herb-crafting for essential oils

Those are all forest products, not so much farm products (though honey can
come from any type of vegetation):

"Forest products include materials derived from a forest for commercial and
personal use such as lumber, paper, and firewood as well as “special forest
products” such as medicinal herbs, fungi, edible fruits and nuts, and other
natural products."

So, land covered with trees which is used to produce mushrooms, truffles,
herbs, essential oils, honey, cork, bark, firewood, etc - that's forest or
woodland, not landuse=farmland.

> > Yes, the same area may be tree covered and residential at the same time.

> Yet, Mateusz, you don't say exactly how to tag these.

You can just overlap them. Don't worry too much about how OpenStreetMap
carto renders it, as long as they way you map it makes sense and matches
reality. Perhaps we can fix the rendering if the current results are
causing confusion, so that the trees only show when the green background
shows.

> a 10 hectare / 25 acre parcel which is 98% trees and 2% house, garage, a
small clearing

Yeah, I would only map the cleared area as landuse=residential in that
case, since the rest of the land is being used to grow trees, not for
residential purposes. While the current owner may not plan to cut firewood
or timber, the next owner might in another 20 or 30 years. Forestry is a
long-term thing.

> 0% row crops, but allows (and actually develops) into orchards,
vineyards, greenhouse_horticulture.

It does not matter what is allowed by the local zoning laws. Don't map
zoning in OpenStreetMap, map what is actually there in reality. So, if they
plant a vineyard, map that as landuse=vineyard. But don't map
landuse=vineyard just because it's allowed to plant a vineyard someday.

– Joseph Eisenberg

On Thu, May 28, 2020 at 3:51 PM stevea <steveaOSM at softworkers.com> wrote:

> Mateusz Konieczny writes:
> > (quoting stevea)
>  "treed farmland" or "heavily wooded residential" prove slightly
> problematic to OSM tagging.
>
> Then, Mateusz Konieczny answers:
> > Map tree-covered area (landuse=forest) and map farmland
> (landuse=farmland) or residential (landuse=residential).  Yes, the same
> area may be tree covered and residential at the same time.
>
>
> If only it were this simple, it appears not to be.  "Tree covered area"
> can be either landuse=forest (OSM's wiki defines something like a
> half-dozed different conventions on how we actually tag this) OR it can be
> natural=wood.  Very roughly stated, what _I_ do (as I see other California
> and USA-based users doing this — I'm not trying to invent a new tagging
> method) is to map distinctly "timber production" areas as landuse=forest
> and distinctly "appears to be wooded — whether pristine and ancient
> never-cut forest I don't necessarily know — as natural=wood.  That is for
> starters and only attempts to start from a point of "visible trees" (as in
> imagery) while only leaning in the direction of landuse in the aspect of
> landuse=forest being "it is well-known that this is an area which is either
> actively forested, or has the right to have its trees felled" (timber
> permits, owned by a logging company, CAN be cut but maybe are still growing
> to maturity, MIGHT be cut but could also be deeded by owner later on to
> become conservation or land trust protected area...).  The possibilities
> are myriad, but OSM does a "fair to good" job of characterizing these, and
> with only two tags, forest and wood.  This isn't perfect nor is the
> consensus about how we do it, so that aspect alone complicates this
> question, while at least providing SOME stability of understanding the
> complex semantics.
>
> THEN there is the aspect of ALSO-has-a-residential-aspect (or perhaps
> PRIMARILY does).  Clearly, a 10 hectare / 25 acre parcel which is 98% trees
> and 2% house, garage, a small clearing and a driveway for access is
> something quite different than natural=wood (as far as its residential
> landuse goes).  However, it might not be all that different than a
> landuse=forest, ESPECIALLY if the residential land owner also has a timber
> permit to cut trees (possible, though not necessarily common, at least
> around here).
>
> Regarding farmland, this has also been discussed many times, especially
> about Santa Cruz County (see that topic's wiki, the fifth paragraph of the
> "Work to be done in the County" section).  Briefly, misunderstandings
> happen because around here, we have areas which are zoned farmland, (and
> are actually areas of — among other agricultural activities — beekeeping,
> wild mushroom harvesting, herb-crafting for essential oils, other unusual
> but certainly agricultural production) but also have significant
> tree-cover, which may or may not be permitted for felling timber.  That is
> a whole lot of complexity to shoehorn into a couple-few simple tagging
> "rules." (Or even "guidelines").  Two "admonishments" in that county-level
> wiki are offered to prevent misunderstandings:  one is that "farmland isn't
> simply row crops" and the second is to read the definition of what our
> landuse=farmland wiki says (about "tillage," for example).  When both local
> zoning says "agricultural" and some activity like wildcrafting herbs to
> harvest essential oils both meet the definition of what I and others agree
> is "landuse=farmland," I tag these landuse=farmland.  These topics are
> complicated.  If we need more tags to better differentiate (I believe we
> do), let's coin them (with discussion and consensus, of course).  For
> example, locally, we distinguish between "Commercial Agricultural" (row
> crops), what most people would certainly agree is classically
> landuse=farmland, but we also have "Residential Agricultural," or what
> might be termed "a live-on family farm" which includes a residence / house
> and significant land, a large amount of which might be "treed," with 0% row
> crops, but allows (and actually develops) into orchards, vineyards,
> greenhouse_horticulture.  Indeed, I have tagged exactly those three latter
> tags on sub-polygons where I see them (as they are distinct tags in OSM),
> but in essence, it is 100% correct to tag the whole area landuse=farmland
> on the entire polygon (in my opinion), even though it is "also"
> residential.  OSM does not have "landuse=live-on-family-farm" as a tag,
> maybe we should better develop something like this and these.
>
> > Yes, the same area may be tree covered and residential at the same time.
>
> Yet, Mateusz, you don't say exactly how to tag these.  And (multi)polygons
> which describe them ARE (I know it, Doug knows it, many know it) and can be
> exceedingly complex structures to "get them right."
>
> > Yes, "tree-covered area" meaning for landuse=forest mismatches strict
> meaning of both landuse and forest
>
> If only it were this simple, it appears not to be.  Again, I would go back
> to the (local? regional?) distinctions I make between natural=wood and
> landuse=forest I make above, but this is long enough already, so I'll stop
> here.
>
> Steve
> _______________________________________________
> Talk-us mailing list
> Talk-us at openstreetmap.org
> https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.openstreetmap.org/pipermail/talk-us/attachments/20200528/76eb78fb/attachment-0001.htm>