Talk:Key:natural

Sand

What about adding natural=sand? There are several places with sand dune formations, some of which can be used as land marks, other might be interesting places to go on holidays. Anyway most of them are dominant land features. --Skippern 19:34, 27 November 2008 (UTC)

natural=sand is something I would more easily associate with a desert, rather than dunes. On the other hand I'm missing a clear distinction between beach and dunes, so if you ask me I'd like to have both natural=sand and natural=dunes. --Tesche 09:36, 27 June 2009 (UTC)

The terms, beach, desert, and dunes are not mutually exclusive. Beach: a sandy area along a shoreline. Desert: a very dry expanse of terrain, usually with hot daytime weather, and sometimes covered with sand. Dunes: small or large hills of sand formed by wind. Large, drifting dunes usually dominate sandy desert terrain. Small dunes are sometimes found on beaches, often loosely anchored by vegetation. (This is my understanding of the terms, anyway.) Vid the Kid 00:42, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

Sorry, my comment about "a clear distinction" was (more than a bit) misleading. What I meant is that I have a very clear distinction between them in my mind, but am not able to tag it without natural=dunes. That's why I would like to see all possible tags. Actually, I've meanwhile started using it on the german north sea island and am now waiting for it to become popular enough to be rendered. Is there a more promising way to do that and express ones interest than writing in these discussion pages? --Tesche 18:28, 1 November 2010 (UTC+1)

When mapping desert terrain it may be useful to have tags for loose shifting sand as in sand dune areas (and silt?) or dry river beds such as wadis. Maybe wadi and sand beach could use the same signiture as both are more easily drivable than dunes. Besides what about saltpans and the somewhat wetter sabkas or lava flows and harrats? --T.woelk 09:13, 27 September 2009 (UTC)

Ridge crest

What is the convention for a ridge crest ? I'm french, and we have the term "ligne de crête" (litt. crest line). It seems that this notion is not very clear in english wording. For a clear picture, see http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crête. Of course, this should be a way ; some nodes would be peaks, but the most numerous would be "ordinary" nodes. Gall 18:15, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

I think "natural=ridge" would make sense to me. Maybe someone should officially propose it.

This could be interesting (someday) for watersheds and drain bassins besides from giving a better idea of mountain terrain.--T.woelk 09:02, 27 September 2009 (UTC)

I agree. There is no need for separate rendering of ridges apart from contour lines. But we need to map the names of the ridges. Therefore we need to draw a line along each ridge and tag it with natural=ridge + name=*. Similarly, we need a tag natural=valley in order to map valley names. --Fkv 03:29, 5 October 2011 (BST)

Sparse Trees

Is there a designation for an area that has too many trees to be a heath, but too few to be a wood? (See here for an example.) There are way to many to to set it to a heath and tag individual trees. — Val42 00:27, 17 January 2010 (UTC)

The area in your example does not seem natural. Maybe landuse=orchard? --Fkv 03:11, 5 October 2011 (BST)

Wood

Are they forests *not* be owned by someone anywhere?? (King, Government, commune?)

This description need some more work. Also, it's not up to the pictures in the linked page. These don't show primeval forest but just some woods which lacks some thinning work (De:Durchforstung) and can be kindof lazy managed subnatural forest nonethless. It's always the question how to tagg it: natural=wood or landuse=forest. Two mappers may tagg it different and by these examples or descriptions, both may be right and noone wrong! --Taunide 12:33, 7 September 2011 (BST)

In many places in the world forests aren't necessarily owned/or leased; and even if they are, it's difficult to verify. My impression is that natural=wood refers to a normal forest and landuse=forest refers to a tree-farm, or perhaps a garden. (Actually, I think the concept of landuse=forest is a mistake, probably a result of someone trying to match some government's taxonomy). -Alan Trick (talk) 15:12, 15 April 2015 (UTC)

Strait

'A narrow channel of water between two larger bodies of water'. Does this belong here or waterway=* ?

Flats

Any thought on how to tag "flats"? In mountainous areas there may be small areas that are atypically flat -- perhaps 5-100 acres in size. These come to be natural sites for parking lots, small population centers, ... See (not on OSM) Manker Flats in the Angeles National Forest of California.

Proposal "tundra"

About 5% of the world belongs to the vegetation zone "tundra". Especially every alpine mountain has a zone above the treeline, which is called 'alpine tundra'.

In physical geography, a tundra is a region where the tree growth is hindered by low temperatures and short growing seasons. There are three types of tundra: arctic tundra, alpine tundra and Antarctic tundra. In a tundra, the vegetation is composed of dwarf shrubs, sedges and grasses, mosses, and lichens. Scattered trees grow in some tundras. Alpine tundra occurs in mountains worldwide. The flora of the alpine tundra is characterized by dwarf shrubs close to the ground. The cold climate of the alpine tundra is caused by the low air pressure, and is similar to polar climate. tundra on Wikipedia. In opposite to fell tundra occurs worldwide.

A fell natural=fell (from Old Norse fell, fjall, "mountain") is a high and barren landscape feature, such as a mountain range or moor-covered hills. The term is most often employed in Scandinavia, the Isle of Man, parts of northern England, and Scotland. fell on Wikipedia. In particular this term don't refer to alpine mountains.

Heathland natural=heath is favoured where climatic conditions are typically warm and dry, particularly in summer, and soils acidic, of low fertility, and often sandy and very free-draining. Heaths are dominated by low shrubs. heath on Wikipedia. In particular this term don't refer to alpine mountains.

I propose the new value natural=tundra. --Rudolf (talk) 12:48, 31 March 2014 (UTC)

OK it makes sense. But why don't you create a regular proposal page for it as it is common? Chrabros (talk) 15:24, 31 March 2014 (UTC)

I do regular proposals for new keys, not do add a new value to an existing key. --Rudolf (talk) 20:10, 31 March 2014 (UTC)

Hill

How are hills tagged? I am not referring to peaks or summits, but a area below the summit or mountain ridge. In Norway we often have lots of named hills, often several within a bigger nature reserve. Any thoughts?

--Ascaaear (talk) 10:54, 11 October 2015 (UTC)

As far as I know, there is not really a distinction between hills and their summits: The hill is mapped by placing a node with its name and natural=peak at its summit. Of course this is not an ideal solution and fails to solve cases where peaks and hills/mountains have different names, but it stems from the difficulty of defining the borders of the hill (which would be necessary for drawing an area). --Tordanik 15:50, 14 October 2015 (UTC)

Terrace

Add some word (terrace?) to describe a flat place in the middle of a slope.

E.g., we are climbing up the face of a slope, and discover this flat place where we can lay down to take a rest. Jidanni (talk) 14:25, 12 February 2018 (UTC)

The best I could find was calling it a "grassland" https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/560743645 . But that is ground cover, not a landform. Jidanni (talk) 14:36, 12 February 2018 (UTC)

There's natural=plateau for flat, elevated area. But I would map that as a node, not as an area, and it's mainly useful if the feature has a name. If the flat area is surrounded by cliffs, then you could verifiably map it as an area with natural=mesa. Mapping the area as a grassland is fine if that's what the landcover is, since the shape of the terrain is available from other sources. --Jeisenbe (talk) 04:36, 21 October 2019 (UTC)

Natural ???

NATURAL = NOT ARTIFICIAL ... meaning ; as found in nature and NOT involving anything made or done by people

• so... natural=wood should only be used on old-growth forests
• also ; natural=tree_row , are 'artificial planted in a row' by people and so NOT natural ...
• also ; natural=water is often used for mapping on waterways/ponds/etc... , digged/made by people , so, NOT 'natural' should be better with landcover=water, which is all-encompassing , 'natural' water AND 'artificial' water ... --Henke54 (talk) 11:14, 23 August 2019 (UTC)

OSM tags rarely follow strict dictionary definitions, especially for keys. Note highway=path or landuse=forest (used for tree-covered areas). Attempting to take definition of word used as key and apply it as main meaning of tags is not useful "should be better with landcover=water" - I am pretty sure that vast majority of people see no overall benefit in changing key name in cases like this. But feel free to (for example) make use of a proposal process. Maybe I am mistaken and overall people will like this idea. Mateusz Konieczny (talk) 15:01, 26 August 2019 (UTC)

• Nevermind, all this seems to be at no avail, so i stop with all this crap ... --Henke54 (talk) 23:05, 26 August 2019 (UTC)

See Also Talk:Tag:natural=peak#Man-made_hills_and_peaks. Jidanni (talk) 22:27, 22 January 2020 (UTC)

Indeed! This goes totally against the original definition of the key natural=* which did not involve features "created by humans" for more than 10 years since it exists. @Mateusz Konieczny:, you did the change on 20th Dec. 2020. Was this discussed and please link us? Sounds quite weird that many people would accept this...

@Henke54: though for natural=tree_row, the feature respects the key's (original) definition. It is the trees that are natural, not the position on a "row". Same goes for the water, the water is a natural element but then it depends where and/or how it flows or is manipulated. It's a matter of interpretation on what is the most relevant. That's why there has been divergences between contributors for landcover=trees, natural=wood, landuse=forest. As for "modified by humans", this can still respect natural features, like a scree area that has been pushed back or a cave entrance enlarged for human needs.

Landcover=* could be powerful when in need to express superimposing features, but... it always stayed as proposal and some of its values has contradictions like landcover=bare_rock because the bare rock is the land itself, thus erratic, enters in conflict/duplication with other features, also never supported by the OSM Carto layer. In fact to be really efficient the keys landuse=* and natural=* would need to be rethought and redefined along landcover to work altogether. For example: there can be shrubs/scrubs on scree in the mountains though we can never express both on the same zone without creating two different areas. --SHARCRASH (talk) 12:10, 22 August 2022 (UTC)

1. Wiki reflects the usage. Not many people would or could edit with concern and knowledge to this.
2. There are now anthropogenic=* and refitted=*.
3. Then the definition of landcover=* is more of an issue. Can you add landcover=* below or above another, if it literally reflects the top "cover" of the land in GIS? Maybe surface=* can help somewhat, when you don't want to draw all the overlapping areas first.

Kovposch (talk) 11:46, 23 August 2022 (UTC)

https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/w/index.php?title=Key%3Anatural&type=revision&diff=2074482&oldid=1893975 changes were fixing misleading content which was inaccurately describing use of natural=* tags. Some people like all keys having clear distinct roles/meanings well matching some narrow meaning of their key in English. This typically does not match actual usage. In this case I documented actual usage of tags which mismatched claims made here. If you think that at this time (or now) it mismatches actual use of tags - feel free to start discussion on tagging mailing list, community.openstreetmap.org or other public place - and mention it here. You can also, change it without discussion (like I did) but please review for example natural=water and Counterintuitive keys and values as such claim would be clearly incorrect as far as I see. Also, in such case I would start such discussion and ask other for feedback @SHARCRASH: Mateusz Konieczny (talk) 15:54, 23 August 2022 (UTC)

Badlands

Mention how to tag a typical w:Badlands area. Jidanni (talk) 23:30, 19 October 2019 (UTC)

I asked about this on the Tagging list. The tag natural=badlands has been used a few times. You could use that on a node at the center of the badlands, or you could map the boundary of the heavily eroded, exposed soil as an area. --Jeisenbe (talk) 04:41, 21 October 2019 (UTC)

Seasonal: Scrub / Grassland / Dry earth

How would you map something like the following area. Seems to have seasonal different vegetation: Scrub or grassland or something like "dry earth" which does not even exist here.

Compare Bing (very old, more green/wet) and Maxar (newer, dry, probably summer). (I have to admit that I have not been to that location, only using aerial imagery, so maybe I should just keep it empty and focus on more obvious areas) --SLMapper1 (talk) 19:50, 24 October 2020 (UTC)

The old imagery shows some bushes or small trees, which have been cut down in the newer imagery. I suspect this is now meadow, pasture or fallow farmland, but it's hard to guess from aerial imagery without local knowledge of the area. --Jeisenbe (talk) 05:51, 25 October 2020 (UTC)

Thanks Jeisenbe. I agree that it is much better if someone with local knowledge maps this and will just leave it as is. --SLMapper1 (talk) 08:49, 25 October 2020 (UTC)

Is it possible to Semi-automaticly map mountain ridges/aretes，based on DEM data？

Using a GIS software like Arcgis，ridgelines can be identified from an elevation raster(DEM), and transformed into vector data.(here is a guide: Identify ridgelines from a mountain in ArcGIS – GIS Crack) While in OSM, ridges have not be mapped in most mountain areas among the world.

It seems very efficient to map ridgelines rely on such a automatic way. Though automatic identification may get wrong, cross-checking would be helpful, both simply runing the GIS software to identify in a small area, then manually checking and editing before uploading by oneself; or building a website similar to Rapid，cross-checking automatic prodused data all over the world by crowdsourcing.

I am wondering why this work have not been doing yet. If there is any difficulty which I didn't expect, pleace share your idea. If there is no problem, at least some guides on this task could be written in OSMwiki by anyone capable, I think. --ManakaAo (talk) 06:13, 7 September 2023 (UTC)

Basin

Basins don't match any of the values documented so far. Does anyone have objections to introducing natural=basin for features like Ljubljanska kotlina? -- Martianfreeloader (talk) 14:42, 3 December 2023 (UTC)

I guess main problem is fuzzines of such features and conflation with water=basin for different kind of basins Mateusz Konieczny (talk) 15:41, 3 December 2023 (UTC)

I agree about the fuzziness and hence myself have reservations against mapping such features.

• However, I found this basin already mapped; just tagged in a dubious way. I was reluctant to destroy someone else's work, so instead I tried to improve it.
• After all, although it's hard to find the exact boundaries, even purists like you and I can't fully deny that this is a real feature -- just as few people will deny the existence of the Pacific Ocean, the Saharan desert or the European Alps. And for renderings like Opentopomap it seems useful to me to have these features in the database.

--Martianfreeloader (talk) 16:00, 3 December 2023 (UTC)

Note that more dubious tags can be dedicated on own tag pages without listing them on overview pages Mateusz Konieczny (talk) 16:50, 3 December 2023 (UTC)

Point

I see that natural=point is missing. It seems just as notable a feature as beaches. Is there a reason we're not using that tag? If there is a reason, documenting it here might prevent future conversations. --Blackboxlogic (talk) 17:51, 21 December 2023 (UTC)

@Blackboxlogic: what natural=point would mean? Mateusz Konieczny (talk) 18:33, 21 December 2023 (UTC)

@Blackboxlogic: what's the difference to natural=peninsula? -- Martianfreeloader (talk) 18:37, 21 December 2023 (UTC)

natural=cape
—— Kovposch (talk) 08:21, 22 December 2023 (UTC)

@Mateusz Konieczny:@Kovposch:@Martianfreeloader: Replying to all three comments... The definition of peninsula mentions a "neck", makes me think of a bowling pin shape. The definition of cape involves "elevated" which makes me think of cliffs. I'm imagining natural=point like the corner of a square, for example https://www.openstreetmap.org/node/3078800816 (this lake has 13 named points that caught my attention). I realize having the word "point" in the name doesn't make it one, or mean that is the right OSM tag. Mostly, I'm just disappointed in place=locality, "yep, this area has a name, but we can't say what type of thing it is". Blackboxlogic (talk) 18:45, 22 December 2023 (UTC)

Thanks for the reply. Which definition of peninsula mentions a "neck"? It's certainly not a condition for something to be called peninsula over here in Yurop (examples are Brittany, Jutland, South West Peninsula, Europe itself, and many more...). To me, your examples are peninsulas, but I'm not a geographer. -- Martianfreeloader (talk) 23:05, 22 December 2023 (UTC)

Definitions of peninsula in Canada always refer to a landform mostly surrounded by water. Canada has a province which is the archetypical example of "peninsula". Similarly a "point" is an landform projecting into a body of water which has a roughly triangular shape. Because it is so easily recognisable from the water, many points have names and unnamed points are recognisable local landmarks. Suggesting to local boaters and canoeists that it is a peninsula would draw a blank stare. It is a widely used term in NA; a valuable term for navigation; and considered to be a distinctly different landform in the communities I'm familiar with. Speaking only for myself, I would be in favour of adding it to the list of natural landforms. HMWamboldt (talk) 02:26, 17 August 2024 (UTC)

natural=shrub?

At least in germany.osm natural=shrub is one of the most often used values for natural on nodes, but it does not appear in the list on this page. There is a also a danger of confusion with natural=scrub. --Kumakyoo (talk) 14:32, 8 September 2024 (UTC)

formation

For key:natural#Geology related: would a subtag help to specify what stratigraphic formation the natural feature was formed in? Wikidata uses Geolex IDs, property 6202. Arlo James Barnes (talk) 23:37, 8 November 2024 (UTC)