[OSM-talk] Woods vs Forests

Daniel Koć daniel at xn--ko-wla.pl
Fri Oct 27 09:21:38 UTC 2017


W dniu 27.10.2017 o 08:36, Warin pisze:

> The landuse key is clearly to tag the use of the land by humans.

It's also to indicate use of the water, hence it's not 100% clear and I 
understand why some people don't like it.

> The natural key is unclear - it seams to be for both things made by 
> nature and things made by man! To me this confused all and the key 
> should be discouraged.
> It should be replaced by the keys landcover and landform, these have 
> no implication of human or nature but simply describe the type of 
> feature.

Let's look at natural=tree - it doesn't matter if the tree was seeded by 
man or by natural means, the tree is natural object, which was not 
created by man (even GMO is about _modyfying_, not creating). There can 
be however man_made=tree - we have a popular artwork in Warsaw, which is 
a palm made of plastic (tagging has changed, but it's a nice example):

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greetings_from_Jerusalem_Avenues
https://www.openstreetmap.org/node/1795659661

Landcover is neutral (what one can see on the surface). I like it 
because it's closest to the "ground truth", and is very useful when we 
don't know more details. However we could promote "surface" tag as a 
primary and it would also make sense for me (currently it's defined as 
additional tag: "used to provide additional information about the 
physical surface of roads/footpaths and some other features").

I have no idea what "landform" can be, so I don't have an opinion on that.

However "natural" key for trees ( 
https://taginfo.openstreetmap.org/tags/natural=trees maybe?) sounds 
perfectly valid for me.

-- 
"My method is uncertain/ It's a mess but it's working" [F. Apple]




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