I love mapping botanical gardens. So when State of the Map US wrapped up last weekend, I was excited to make a return trip to Tucson Botanical Gardens for some serious micromapping. I had already spent hours adding buildings, garden spaces, and trails. Now I could work on benches, fountains, artwork, etc. Here’s how it looks after a few more hours of micromapping:

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The garden currently has an augmented reality exhibition called Seeing the Invisible. Users download an app, and it overlays 3D images of artwork over the plants you view through your phone. Any time I use an app like this, my first question is “What map are they using for navigation?” In this case it was very unclear because there was no attribution on the map or on the Credits page. You can view the map here.

At first I thought it must be a proprietary map, but as I looked closer, I began to recognize a lot of details that seemed very familiar. The trails looked much closer to the OpenStreetMap version than what’s on the official garden map. And some of the “buildings” are actually shade structures you wouldn’t normally see on any other map. I realized this map was directly copied from OSM with no attribution.

I sent an email to the executive director of the app project explaining that use of OSM map data without attribution is a copyright violation, but it’s really easy to fix. They got back to me right away with an apology and a promise that attribution will be included in the next update of the app. That’s a win!