OpenStreetMap
rivers of Gabon, Congo-Brazzaville and Cameroon
Posted by katpatuka on 27 September 2010 in English.I don't know how many km rivers I added the last few days in Gabon, Congo-Brazzaville and Cameroon! (... and in other well-mapped corners of world un-emplyed micro-mappers start to map benches and gully covers...!)
Wikipedia is way behind in river decriptions too: no coordinates of river mouths, sometimes no names of affluents and tributaries (but the really huge main rivers)... Best sources for river names is still the UN (for example http://www.un.org/Depts/Cartographic/map/profile/gabon.pdf). Lots to do in Africa - I don't use potlatch for mapping there; josm with landsat has much higher resolution.
And - besides rivers - (nearly) no gpx-tracks to be found in the net! (...was just lucky with finding really good tracks of N2 road(s) in Gabon, Congo and Cameroon ;-)
Now look at some of these never heard river names:
Ogooué basin: Offoué, Ngounié, Mpassa, Ivindo,...
Ivindo basin: Djoua, Liboumba, Mvoung,...
Alima basin: Dziélé, Lékéti,...
Congo basin: Djoué, Sangha, Likouala, Léfini,...
Likouala basin: Mambili, Kouyou, Lékoli, Lengoue,...
...sort of project of the month for me... ;-)
Discussion
Comment from Xapitoun on 29 September 2010 at 13:16
nice. I lived in Gabon a longtime ago and I wanted to map someparts of this country. But you're right, it is very complicated to find maps. I didn't knoe about landsat in JOSM. I will looking at...
Good Job.
Comment from meannder on 30 September 2010 at 08:00
Wondering how this is done, mapping (a river, town, landuse, etc) without 'visiting' it...
Where to find some information about "landsat in josm"?
Comment from katpatuka on 30 September 2010 at 08:12
Well, you'll have to download and activate the WMS plugin in josm - then you can choose the landsat imagery. To get an overview of an area zoom out to about 5km - to map small winding streams you'll have to zoom in down to around 300m...
Have a look at the possibilities of the Landsat layer(s) in josm by right-clicking on it...
Have a look at http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/JOSM/Plugins/WMSPlugin
;-)