[OSM-talk] Do we care if its forest or wood? Natural world mapping ...

[Mike Harris]

Not only on Arizona ... In the UK a 'forest' was originally a hunting area,
often owned by the king or a duke etc. who had exclusive hunting rights. The
presence or absence of trees was incidental. Some of this terminology
survives e.g. in the 'New Forest' in Hampshire where there is a wooded area
but also a lot of unwooded. The Forest of Mare and Mondrum (and its more
modern partial successor, the Mersey Forest) in NW England are both almost
treeless - although in a few hundred years the plan is to reafforest them
...


Mike Harris

-----Original Message-----
From: Andrew Ayre [mailto:andy at britishideas.com] 
Sent: 20 July 2009 17:09
To: osm
Subject: Re: [OSM-talk] Do we care if its forest or wood? Natural world
mapping ...

I've been adding the national forests in Arizona, and the Wikipedia
definition doesn't fit too well. There are areas here that are inside an
administrative boundary called a National Forest where the trees are very
sparse - 10s of meters between them. Elsewhere in the forest the trees are
dense but it is a gradual transition from sparse to dense that could take 50
miles or more to travel through.

I.e. the only clear boundary of the forest is the administrative boundary,
not what it looks like on the ground.

Andy

Barnett, Phillip wrote:
> +1
> 
> I believe the real problem was in the original creation of the tag, 
> landuse = forest. This should, in my opinion, have been landuse = 
> forestry, which would then have enabled the natural = wood tag to be 
> used at the same time, or even natural = forest
> 
> 
> Also, from Wikipedia,
> 
> "A forest is an area with a high density of trees" .... "Forests are
differentiated from woodlands by the extent of canopy coverage: in a forest,
the branches and the foliage of separate trees often meet or interlock,
although there can be gaps of varying sizes within an area referred to as
forest. A woodland has a more continuously open canopy, with trees spaced
further apart, which allows more sunlight to penetrate to the ground between
them."
> 
> Cheers
> 
> 
> 
> 
> PHILLIP BARNETT
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> P  Please consider the environment. Do you really need to print this
email?
> -----Original Message-----
> 
> From: talk-bounces at openstreetmap.org 
> [mailto:talk-bounces at openstreetmap.org] On Behalf Of Tom Chance
> Sent: 20 July 2009 15:43
> To: talk at openstreetmap.org
> Subject: [OSM-talk] Do we care if its forest or wood? Natural world
mapping ...
> 
> 
> So putting to one side arguments about the inherent value of trees, 
> British arboreal imperialism and Xybot tricks...
> 
> Why do we care if something is a wood or a forest? Why do we care 
> whether or not it's managed, and whether we all have the same sense of 
> what "managed" means?
> 
> Back in the good old days of stream vs river there was a clear need 
> for maps to distinguish between them. We now have a nice range of 
> water features from riverbank and river to stream and drain.
> 
> Surely the basic, universal need is "there are some trees here, 
> they're called Sherwood Forest"? Evoke natural=wood (lakes and beaches 
> also fall in between managed and unmanaged land but are marked as 
> natural)
> 
> In addition you can add in:
> 
> * type=deciduous (so we can all see what sorts of trees to expect)
> * landuse=forestry (so we know if it's managed for commercial reasons)
> 
> I'd really like to nominate someone like Nick Whitelegg as Countryside 
> Tsar for a day, so he could work out the different basic features we 
> need to know about in the countryside and an appropriate tagging 
> schema. Then, as always, a combination of wiki documentation, Mapnik & 
> Tiles at Home rules, Xybot mischief and peer education could disseminate this
sensible approach.
> 
> Every time I try to map a walk up a hill I get depressed by the lack 
> of comprehensible tags supported by renderers to get the map anywhere 
> near as useful as Ordnance Survey.
> 
> Regards,
> Tom
> 
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--
Andy
PGP Key ID: 0xDC1B5864