OpenStreetMap
No, seriously, c’mon!
I had to check on OSM.org to see if my Opensnowmap has a problem. No, it’s perfectly fine. But fine for who ?
It’s not like there is no mapper in the US, as at least one of them made something like this a very long time ago (6 years). Is there anybody in the US using OSM? Is there any US-based company using OSM? It seems a bit stupid to do so at first sight, isn’t it?
Discussion
Comment from Carnildo on 17 February 2017 at 00:42
I’m not seeing the alleged joke.
If you’re referring to the grid pattern in the forest, it’s real: the Pacific Railroad Acts granted alternating square miles of land extending to the sides of the track to the companies building the transcontinental railroads. In rural areas of the western United States, much of this ownership pattern still exists.
Comment from SomeoneElse on 17 February 2017 at 10:00
It’s perhaps worth adding that what you’re seeing is “landuse=forest” in the sense of timber production - imported ways such as http://www.openstreetmap.org/way/64298415 . It doesn’t correspond to “trees on the ground here and only here” (as the underlying imagery shows, there’s a light covering of trees all over). There’s a bit of background about the ways that people map forest/woodland/trees in OSM here - unfortunately it’s quite complicated. See also here for part of the discussion in OSM’s “standard” style about how to map forest/woodland/trees.
Comment from Baloo Uriza on 17 February 2017 at 10:59
I, too, am missing what is wrong with this picture, and I’ve been to the area in question.
Comment from ff5722 on 17 February 2017 at 11:43
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/IOTD/view.php?id=89541&src=iotdrsscontent
Comment from SomeoneElse on 17 February 2017 at 11:47
… which for the curious is here in OSM.
Comment from SK53 on 17 February 2017 at 11:51
The issue is that US mappers have used landuse=forest to map administrative areas owned and managed by the Federal US Forest Service (mainly National Forests). In virtually all the National Forest areas much of the land is actually used for other purposes: for instance in Summit County Colorado many of the main ski resorts are situated within the National Forest.
Unfortunately, although the topic is discussed from time to time on talk-us, no real consensus has been reached to use this tag in ways closer to how the rest of the world uses it. Recent discussions do suggest some viable alternative tagging approaches, but I’m not holding my breath.
Comment from Circeus on 17 February 2017 at 17:08
@SomeoneElse
Actually, it’s located here.
Comment from BushmanK on 17 February 2017 at 19:05
@SK53, what you’ve described (tagging a territory that is only called “a forest”) is an example of a literal tag name interpretation. That is an obvious mistake since documentation implies a presence of wooded vegetation. But local communities could often be quite stubborn in their misuse of tags.
Comment from SK53 on 17 February 2017 at 19:32
@BushmanK I dont rely on the documentation as this is often misleading and not infrequently an interpretation of one person, or a small group of people. I’d far rather that the wiki described HOW people used tags than saying how they SHOULD use tags. As fo descriptive and prescriptive grammars the former does not preclude tags being wrong: anyone tagging a lake highway=motorway is indubitably wrong.
On the other hand the US interpretation of landuse=forest (and a few other tags leisure=recreation_ground, place=hamlet, highway=residential etc) is very far removed from usage anywhere else. So even if it is consensus tagging in the US it is not on a worldwide basis.
@Circeus: that looks like individual townships of national forest land have also been tagged forest even though the landuse tag has gone from the large polygon (national or state forest).
Comment from BushmanK on 17 February 2017 at 20:20
@SK53,
Indeed, sometimes, documentation is misleading. However, without shifting from descriptive to prescriptive, it is nearly impossible to maintain any consistency of tagging. Eventually, a certain tag could get a hundred different interpretations. Descriptive and prescriptive parts could easily coexist, describing a certain practice for data consumers and prescribing one (not necessarily the same) to mappers. And I don’t see it as an issue of opinion against another opinion. At least, because opinion with no reason except “I want” or “I’m used to that” has very little value, as well as tagging for a renderer, for example (that is a form of very self-willed tag interpretation).