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

[Liz]

On Thu, 23 Jul 2009, Tyler wrote:
> Liz,
> I would classify most eucalyptus spp. as deciduous (though judging by your
> genus compositions you're in Australia, and I don't know what the species
> do there), and probably classify casuarina spp as coniferous... but that's
> a bad classification system. That's like saying "this apple is green, that
> grapefruit is citrus."
> There are deciduous conifers, and evergreen broadleafs. Coniferous doesn't
> even account for all of the needleleaf trees.. The wiki should probably be
> suggesting deciduous, evergreen and mixed. . .
>
> Adopting the UNEP-WCMC broad categories [1] would make much more sense than
> the current bad wiki suggestions. and adopting the more specific categories
> would cover a vast majority of forests.
>
> [1] http://www.unep-wcmc.org/forest/fp_background.htm#

Yes, I am in Au, and our flora (and fauna) are unique.
None of our standard stuff is deciduous. 
Deciduous stuff from other realms has been planted here.
So I expect that all eucalypts are evergreen.
Casuarina aren't coniferous as they are actually flowering plants, in which 
the flower *resembles* a brown cone.

the broad categories in the UNEP-WCMC system make sense but the terms don't 
cover "Mallee" and the most common type of surviving Australian forest "dry 
sclerophyll" is a term very few mappers would be familiar with.

This is a listing of Australian forest types
from the legend of a map 
http://www.australianforests.org.au/pdf/forest_type.pdf

Acacia
Callitris
Casuarina
Eucalypt Mallee
Eucalypt woodland
Eucalypt open
Eucalypt closed
Mangrove
Melaleuca
Rainforest
Other
Plantation

descriptive work
http://www.australianforests.org.au/australiasforests/forest-types.htm and 
http://www.daff.gov.au/brs/publications/series/forest-profiles

And I had to look up callitris, to find out that is a mere 20km to a large 
callitris forest from home.

The end result of my quick check is that 
1. European or northern hemisphere categories of forest are incompatible with 
Australian flora.
2. Standardised category names may be meaningless to mappers who aren't going 
to use them if they don't understand them.



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