Hi frozenrabi,

Just a pointer, in this part of Zambia rivers are part of the Congo Basin so will flow towards the Congo River, generally east. The rest of Zambia is in the Zambezi Basin so flow towards the Zambezi, generally south. All rivers and streams are seasonal in nature.

Be careful you don't break relations with your edits. The Kasanka National Park boundary relation was broken here with your recent edits. Would be a good idea you don't edit existing major features such as relations and park boundaries

No problem, I suppose technically they should be a service road but they are used for general traffic anyway

Done so

Hi Daniel,

Sorry I don't, just came across these edits while doing edits in the Serenje area, I am a local mapper and see many errors by remote mappers who are interpreting features in the images incorrectly, trouble is dambo features appear differently depending on the time of the year and whether they have been burnt off as well, many are tagged as water bodies in error. They could be classified as wet meadows during the rains or grasslands during the dry season.

Dambos are highly important natural features in Zambia covering 12% of the land area of the country and take many forms, tourists who have visited the parks here will have come across them as waterholes or pans.

Hi Władysław Komorek,

These clusters you have tagged as buildings are definitely not buildings. I am not 100% sure of what they are but think it way be heaps of wood piled form clearing the land. If I am correct they will later have been burnt or built into a kiln and burnt as charcoal, the curse of Zambia as it promotes deforestation.

Hi Daniel Specht,

Ways 965271154 and 965271155 are not bare rock but seasonal wetlands known as dambos that will be burnt in the dry season, hence the black appearance in the imagery.

Hi Władysław Komorek,

Any road running along a power line in Zambia will generally be a track and used for maintenance by the national power company, ZESCO. They may appear more substantial than they are in reality due to local foot traffic that make use of them.

Hi Władysław Komorek,
way/965917374 and similar are not water bodies but seasonal wetlands known as dambos. In the dry season they will burn as the grass becomes very dry so will sometimes appear as dark black areas in the imagery. Dambos can take many forms and often are the head waters of many rivers in Zambia making up 12% of Zambia's area and so are a very important natural feature.

Hi uliwanne,

The OpenTopmap elevations are generated from from NASA STRM data and are fairly accurate. The trouble is you are very roughly tracing ephemeral streams from satellite imagery from features I don't think you understand and often your lines are some meters off where the actual stream may run. If it is just a few errors it is not a problem to correct but when it is many as is often the case it takes hours and even months. Trying to correct the waterway errors you made in the Mkushi district has taken me months and I am sure there are still many errors.

I can assure you the Zambian Government does not use OpenStreetMap to make decisions about development especially as the data is very inaccurate and many years out of date. Firstly the satellite imagery can be many many years out of date, I know this because I live in Zambia and know what is the situation on the ground. Secondly remote mappers such as yourself are mapping charcoal kilns, anthills and bushes as buildings, even burnt logs. Also many of what you think are roads or tracks are not, especially around small fields in the rural areas that you insist on mapping. If somebody tried to use what you map as roads or tracks they would end up in serious trouble, that is why I get annoyed.

We do not have ebola in Zambia, never have. The Government here has never flown out to register sick people, missionaries maybe, but they don't use OpenStreetMap.

If you check you will see I have mapped many parts of Zambia, in fact I only map in Zambia and small areas in neighbouring countries because I know them. I don't map in Europe or other countries because I know I will make errors, such as you are making here in Zambia. Recently I have been forced to correct the many many errors made by remote mappers and it is becoming disheartening.

If your wish is for Governments and official organizations to make more use of OpenStreetMap then it has to be more accurate otherwise it is just rubbish. Take more time to look closely at what you are mapping and you may get an idea as to what you are seeing in the images, don't just assume streams run through the middle of the wet lands sometimes they run to the sides or zig zag across them, some have no streams at all. These wetlands are seasonal and known as "dambos" they act as a sponge and once fully saturated start to run with a small stream and some years may never run and often only run towards the end of the wet season which is from November to March. In the dry season they will burn hence the large black areas you see in the images.

If you would like to know what animals are in the Kafue National Park Google it.

uliwanne,

You are making many errors with rivers I have asked you before to try use OpenTopoMap. It seems all you want to do is cover Zambia with totally incorrect information. It takes hours correcting the errors you have made, many I don't find.

Hotosm project is to map roads only, you are not following the guidelines. I will have to report this mapping to the Hot coordinators is you continue. This is part of the Kafue National Park, there are very few roads or buildings in this region

Hi uliwanne,

This is a national park, wildlife reserve, the small tracks are game trails leading to the water so should not be mapped and other roads will be tracks, there is not likely to be many buildings in the park apart from lodges along the Kafue river

Hi uliwanne,
The stream, way/963371242, is running in the wrong direction

Hi uliwanne,
You have mapped the stream, way/963354419, going over the ridge near where it crosses the provincial boundary, you have also connected the stream to the boundary, both are obviously errors. Maxar imagery is not very clear in this part of Zambia but you can double check with OpenTopoMap imagery to get the correct river directions. Again please do not map tracks around field outlines there are NO tracks here and you will be cluttering up the map with incorrect information.

Hi uliwanne,

Please don't map the outline of every field with a track, there are no tracks around these fields. Also some of the streams you are mapping are running in the wrong directions and do not commence at the very end of the wetlands they run in but usually some way down. I don't think the purpose of hotosm-project-10106 is to map waterways in any case. Making repairs to incorrect waterway mapping is extremely time consuming.

I would appreciate if you would take this advice into consideration.

Thanks

Surely the fact that a highway has a house or building nearby does not automatically make it a residential road. See osm.wiki/East_Africa_Tagging_Guidelines

"Residential roads highway=residential Roads lined with housing. This tag is used only in urban or village areas and only on roads which do not serve a through connection function."

These are not villages you are mapping here but isolated dwellings on small family farms. A residential road in Zambia would be exactly the same as one in the UK or Europe, one lined either side by residences or houses not a road leading to a cluster of houses on a farm

Perhaps the relationship should be renamed the United Kingdom and Dependent Territories or similar. The British Empire is archaic with negative connotations and no longer exists. As regards moving it to Open Historical Map even that is not correct as it does not cover the entire extent of the British Empire. This is just not correct on any level.

Hi pedr0faria,

These are actually farm tracks along side a fence line within a cleared firebreak. If you zoom right in you will since it is in fact a track either side of the fence, the firebreak gives it the appearance of being a wider road than it is.

Hi JosV67,

I see you have been mapping in the wetlands close to the Lukanga Swamp, this area is flooded seasonally and the extent of flooding will depend on the amount of rain received in that season, the tracks will not be tracks but may be paths that may not exist the next season many features that look like buildings are in fact ant hills although in a really wet year small grass structures may be built on these anthills by fishermen,or cattle herders that have taken their animals out to graze on the green vegetation after the rains. These structures are, by nature, temporary. Have a look at the Bing imagery of the same area to see how it has appeared at another time. In the Bing imagery the black areas are where bush fires have burnt the dry vegetation during the dry season, May to November.

Hi,
ways such as way/925017040 are farm tracks within a cleared firebreak around a large cattle paddock. There is often 2 of these tracks either side of a fence line this gives the impression of it being a wide road. The grid layout of the paddocks and fields indicate that this is a large commercial farm. This farm is on the western edge of the large Chisamba commercial farm block, the areas to the west of this going towards Mumbwa are what are termed small scale farms and have a less regular layout and small collections of buildings surrounded by fields.

The meandering paths are cattle tracks and will vary from season to season but may become quite well worn when they converge on pens or water points and gates in the fences surrounding the paddocks.

Cheers,
Dave