Proposal talk:Grassland

The photo just looks like a hay field. Are you proposing that we start to tag fields as areas? I think just tagging barrier= for the boundaries of the field is a huge amount of work in itself. I'll lay an egg before I'm going to start tagging hay fields, or any field, as an area; and/or by usage. This is simple because of the enormity of such a task. Plus the usage changes anyway, they'll be livestock in late summer. Certain things on the map are just the default, there what's left in the presence of nothing else. Areas of grass are just that. Unless these 'grasslands' are specific areas similar to nature reserves, which are signposted and labelled as such in reality, then I really don't think mapping a lack of anything as a feature is a good plan. Please elaborate on this whole proposal so there is a good argument for it. Ben 16:41, 15 December 2008 (UTC)

With such a heterogeneous planet I don't think there's such a thing as "default landscape", not even on a per country scale. In some places the most common unmapped land is grassland, in others farmland and in some it's anything from wood to the desert. Defining some sort of categories for the wild landscape is still good. Alv 20:26, 15 December 2008 (UTC)

Alv : +1 FrViPofm 20:58, 27 May 2009 (UTC)

What is the difference to natural=land? I've seen this used quite widely in Austria for grasslands. maybe it too would need a definition.--Extremecarver 17:33, 15 December 2008 (UTC)

natural=land states that there 'is land', rather than 'the use of the land', or specifics as to the surface. This tag, as far as I can tell, would say there 'is land' and there 'is grass'. Any surface such as this is so common it would seldom help on a map. Like tagging sand in the sahara, or snow/ice in Antarctica. But, if there is an area of grass in the sahara...that's the only time I would see a need for tagging the usually common surfaces. Ben 18:25, 15 December 2008 (UTC)

That I see differently, for orientation it's allways good to know what is where. Especially we need to tag a clearing in a forest not only by making it a multipolygon inner, but also by specifying wheter it's bushes or grass in the clearing. Specifying an area something, also lets other users see that it has already been tagged and it's not simply an area where landuse or natural has been forgotten. For Austria/Germany anyhow the differentiation between landuse and natural is pretty bad, because there exists outside of natural parks no really unmanaged natural vegetation, landuse is done everywhere.--Extremecarver 20:20, 15 December 2008 (UTC)

There's a significant difference between natural grasslands and fields that have been ploughed, whether still under cultivation or not (although grazing land may still be natural). The natural Canadian Prairie ecosystems, for example, have a diverse set of plant species and distinctive soil structure that are gone for decades once land is cultivated. The tall-grass prairie is particularly endangered, with about 1% of it remaining. Natural=grassland is needed to map this. —Michael Z. 2011-03-10 19:38 z

vegetation=steppe

I feel the need to be able to describe the vegetation type of large regions too - and I mean regions which could span several tiles. I live in a region which has mainly a steppe-type vegetation over hundrets(!) of kilometers, so it would be nice to tag it something=steppe on a large scale and let it have a nice icon similar to landuse=vineyard. Therefore I'd rather like to use a vegetation=steppe instead of grassland=steppe. Maybe natural=steppe is possible too but IMHO natural=* is a bit - er - overloaded anyway... --katpatuka 12:29, 15 February 2009 (UTC)

Extended usage

I think nature=grassland is worth being included. However, I feel the proposed extened usage options could be revised. Steppe, praire and pampas are not unique, they are diferent names for the same biome i.e. temperate grassland. I think it would be more worth while using extensions such as: grassland=tropical (savanna and veldt), grassland=temperate (steppe, praire and pampas), grassland=montane (upland grassland) and grassland=flooded as they are recognised distinct biomes. - Joss 23:04, 4 June 2009 (UTC)

A biome is a type of region on a global scale. A grassland biome, and its constituent ecoregions, for example, include many large areas of forests, lakes, deserts, etc. See [1].

We're mapping particular features on a smaller scale. Natural= is really the local natural land cover (as opposed to human-created land use). And as an OSM mapper, I'd just assume that an area of grassland in the tropics consists of tropical grasses. —Michael Z. 2011-03-10 21:53 z

Wake up!

It's 2011, time to vote. I'm starting to use this tag today. Btw, in Spanish, "pampas" may be a plural of "pampa", but I think the English word for Argentine grasslands is most commonly just "pampas" used as a non-countable noun (counterarguments are welcome). I also added the Hungarian "puszta" and the South African "veld" (arguments for "pusta" and "veldt" are welcome, and for "savannah" too!). --T99 09:02, 26 July 2011 (BST)

-Wakes up with a start and blinks owlish 8-)

A bold initiative T99, did you follow the Procedure?

/Johan Jönsson 18:55, 2 September 2011 (BST)

I was not at home when the vote started (holidays fra from home). And I have seen no RFC. So i'm voting now rthat I see it has been removed from the proposed features.

And I shure I'm not alone in this case.

I'm surprised that the grassland has been removed from the proposed features when the tag is used near 6000 times.

--FrViPofm 20:56, 10 September 2011 (BST)