landuse=forest or natural=wood?

General talk
1

Hi,

I’m a bit confused about when to use these tags. I’ve been mainly using natural-wood for small mixed woodland areas near me, and forest for areas which are managed.

How should I be using them? Other people seem to use them interchangeably, even though they are rendered differently.

Thanks,

Jon

2

Hi,

if you have a look at here: http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Key:natural
So natural=wood only for a forest in a wild natural meaning and landuse=forest for plants that are for getting wood for lumber mills and so on :slight_smile:

3

Aha, that’s how I was using them anyway. It seems a lot of people are getting it wrong…

Cheers,

Jon

4

See also http://help.openstreetmap.org/questions/324/when-should-we-use-landuseforest-rather-than-naturalwood

5

There is an additional complication that a ‘collection of trees’ can be partly forest,partly wood,partly scrub; I’ve seen some very astute tagging but I’ve also noticed a complete lack of awareness of such subtle differences - often when rendering OS data.

6

I think the natural=wood vs landuse=forest is a mess. Its often not obvious whether an area of trees is “natural” or not.

I think it would be more useful to use something like landcover=trees. See http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Proposed_features/landcover
Plus use extra tags for what the area is used for, whether it is managed, and what type of trees etc.