OpenStreetMap

Mapping Agricultural areas

Posted by TuanIfan on 15 July 2015 in English.

Mapping the landuse items such as farmland and orchards have never been easier since the changes to these keys in OSM. However, it may still be a boring job if you are not patient enough to draw all agricultural zones which are often large and covering several other features like ponds (landuse = basin), house (landuse=residential), roads and meadows for grazing (landuse=meadow). These smaller areas are shown in different colours : orange, blue, gray, white and light green respectively. So, it is not a boring job at all when all of these are uploaded and rendered on the map.

Have a look at this farmland Alloway country south of Bundaberg City, QLD, Australia, which I have mapped in recent 3 days. The hardest challenge has been tagging forests - either natural=wood and landuse=forest, however, i prefer forest for protected areas, while wood are smaller, or riverside woodlands.

Alloway, QLD http://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=13/-24.9472/152.3864

Before mapping

After mapping Note: not all of the updates are loaded in this view. Zoom in to see more.

Discussion

Comment from naoliv on 15 July 2015 at 18:58

Usually landuse=forest (or better, basically every landuse=*) means that there is some kind of human action or usage in the area (wood extraction for commerce, for example).
For protected areas I would use natural=wood instead.

Also take a look in landuse=forest

Comment from TuanIfan on 15 July 2015 at 21:14

That’s really informative @naoliv. Thank u so much. I’ll remember the “landuse” for future mapping.

Cheers mate.

Comment from Warin61 on 16 July 2015 at 01:14

Yes.. mapping landuse is ‘boring’!

It is also seen as less usefull than mapping roads and POIs.

However it does give a good impression as to what goes on in areas when zoomed out. I’m presently trying to map the landuse=residential around Sydney. Boring. But it will better give an impression as to the size of Sydney when zoomed out (I hope).

Comment from Rhubarb on 16 July 2015 at 15:08

Nice work there Tuan :-) It makes the big open spaces look pretty, and conveys some useful information for travellers (ie, lots of fields, not a barren desert / swamp / etc).

I should resume more mapping soon, I’ve been lazy in the arm chair mapping / surveying department of late.

Cheers, Rhu

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