On 20/10/19 11:19, Joseph Eisenberg wrote:
How should areas of bare soil, such as badlands, be tagged?
Currently there are documented tags for dry areas of bedrock, stones and sand:
natural=bare_rock, natural=shingle, natural=scree, and natural=sand
For tidal areas, beaches and wetlands there's also natural=beach,
natural=shoal and wetland=mud
However, there's no documented, common tag for dry areas of exposed
clay, silt or mixed soil.
natural=badlands has been used 5 times, but this is rather specific
and may not be well-known outside of North America:
https://taginfo.openstreetmap.org/tags/natural=badlands
natural=desert is common, but includes all kinds of vegetated and
unvegetated arid areas; many of these can be tagged with natural=
grassland, heath, scrub, sand, scree etc.
Desert is a climate, not a land cover nor a land form. Some deserts include
'lakes'.
The key natural has climate, land form and land cover all in the one tagging
scheme, I don't think is is a good scheme and would be better separated into
the individual things it is trying to tag.
natural=clay has been used twice:
https://taginfo.openstreetmap.org/tags/natural=clay
natural=earth has been used 20 times:
https://taginfo.openstreetmap.org/tags/natural=earth
natural=bare_earth has 23 uses:
https://taginfo.openstreetmap.org/tags/natural=bare_earth
There's also natural=pebbles with 67 uses
(https://taginfo.openstreetmap.org/tags/natural=pebbles)
and natural=gravel 90 times -
https://taginfo.openstreetmap.org/tags/natural=gravel
But most of those could be scree or shingle, which would be more specific.
Would it be best to describe the type of soil, like natural=clay,
=silt, =earth, =pebbles, =gravel?
Better to tag specific things rather than a group.
Should mappers use surface=* without another top-level tag?
No.
Should natural=bare_earth be used in general for clay and other bare soils?
Or is natural=badlands best to describe the specific feature of an
arid area where the bare soil is exposed due to erosion?
I have no idea of what 'badlands' are .. from your information it is not single
land cover nor a land form.
So it is a climate? A climate that causes erosion to a bare surface? No
vegetation?
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