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

[Christoph Hormann]

On Wednesday 05 March 2014, Richard Z. wrote:
> > >climatic zones
> > >vegetation zones
> > >soil biology
> > >vegetation layers
> >
> > Are any of these things verifiable?
>
> of course. Tons of literature about it.

That is not what verifiability is about.  Climate and Vegetation 
characteristics are generally continuously changing properties and the 
specific zone limits defined by some convention are not usually 
verifiable in the field.  In case of climate zones you would for 
example need long term measurements at a certain place to determine if 
it belongs to a certain climate zone and even if you have that you 
cannot say anything about the climate of other locations - hence you 
cannot draw a boundary in a verifiable way.

I explained this in case of deserts (probably the most prominent attempt 
to map something like this in OSM) some time ago in 

http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Talk:Tag:natural%3Ddesert

-- 
Christoph Hormann
http://www.imagico.de/