[OSM-talk] new mailing list request - OSM outdoor/natural phenomena mapping

Martin Koppenhoefer dieterdreist at gmail.com
Wed Mar 5 15:04:10 UTC 2014


2014-03-05 14:42 GMT+01:00 Richard Z. <ricoz.osm at gmail.com>:

> As an example, we are having repeated discussions how to tag forrest but
> did not even start thinking about a generic concept how to map vegetation
> such as:
>
> climatic zones
> vegetation zones
> soil biology
> vegetation layers
>



most of these do not seem remotely suitable for the osm data model and the
way we collect and store data. Climatic zones and vegetation zones are very
big areas with fuzzy boundaries. We do not even manage to map huge areas
with clear boundaries (e.g. look for the atlantic ocean in osm), how could
we start to map those with fuzzy boundaries? These also might be subject to
generalization and interpretation to a degree that 2 scientists in the same
field would draw the borders differently. IMHO these could maybe produced
out of osm data (together with other data like precipitation, temperature
etc.) if you'd analyzed the occurence of certain species (the tags for
mapping single plants are there, you only have to use them, currently these
are the numbers:
319 553
*species* <http://taginfo.openstreetmap.org/keys/species>
125 867
*species*:de <http://taginfo.openstreetmap.org/keys/species%3Ade>
81 881
*species*:it <http://taginfo.openstreetmap.org/keys/species%3Ait>

131 887* taxon* <http://taginfo.openstreetmap.org/keys/taxon>

Tags regarding soil biology are also very hard to verify on the ground by
the general mapper. They require specialized knowledge and maybe also a
laboratory to do analysis and similar. Even if collecting the data wasn't
an issue (say it would be possibile to import "perfect" data), still it
won't integrate or fit well with the datamodel (this is more statistical
data than actual hard facts, and drawing the border is almost impossible).

Your last point, vegetation layers, might be a little bit different. IMHO
this could be done, and partly it already is (see the landcover-key)

cheers,
Martin
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