[OSM-talk] xybot

[Frederik Ramm]

Hi,

Jason Cunningham wrote:
> Regarding Wood & Forest. [...]  I've tried to track back and find how these two unique and
> confusing definitions for Woodland came about, and it seems to lead to the
> talk-de list (I cant be sure though). 

No you can't. The discussion is quite old and was not started by the 
Germans, this time.

If you check

http://lists.openstreetmap.org/pipermail/talk/2006-September/007294.html

and the following posts in that thread, you will find that people had 
all sorts of ideas back then: That wood was something to do with 
hunting; that forest/wood meant different predominiant tree types; that 
forest/wood differ in canopy cover, and so on.

The current consensus seems to be that anything "natural=..." means 
little human controlling intervention, while anything "landuse=..." 
means humans manage most aspects of it. So a tree plantation would be 
landuse=forest and a jungle would be natural=wood but in between it is a 
mess. Germany, for example, simply doesn't have unmanaged forests; even 
the natural reserves are managed somehow.

Bye
Frederik

-- 
Frederik Ramm  ##  eMail frederik at remote.org  ##  N49°00'09" E008°23'33"