Continuing conversation with Guy Saachar and Zeev Stedller…
HAMAARAG made a new LULC (LAND COVER/LAND USE) raster layer of Israel, with categories for different kind of Vegetations, Agriculture etc. the data is new (2014-2016), high resolutions (25 meters for pixel) and quit realistic.
I’ts based on analysis of NDVI data, KKl, RATAG and other data sources.
The result is the best (open to the public) classification of forests, mediteran maquis (horesh yam tichoni), scrubs and bushes (bata sichanit/griga and bata esbonit) as well as classification for agriculture lands for field crops (gadash) and Groves/Orchards (mataim).
I don’t think we need to wait of the data to be available in govmap / data.gov.il, although it can be good Idea to upload it to data.gov.il as well (Harel…).
As for now the data is open to the public as raster (which is the origin type of the data).
Harel can pass it as vector layer just for a technical use of it for OSM.
Let consider we have it as vector data, what are the procedures to add it to OSM Database?
Bear in mind that much of the OSM data is wrong as KKL-managed areas were imported whole-sale as forests even though they might not be. So even in areas already covered we might consider replacement.
We are working with Ya’ari Ginott of the Ministry of Environmental Protection to host the State of Nature report GIS data, i.e. it is our (Hamaarag’s) work and attribution, yet they allocate bandwidth to host these layers. As Govmap can only work with vector data, I have vectorized the layers and manipulated the attributes to comply with the vector symbology. The full dataset in raster format and accompanying symbology files should be uploaded shortly to data.gov.il, again, under Environmental Protection database.
Raster data was created from vector data and raster data from Landsat 8
We also used KKL data to delineate planted conifer forests.
I suggest performing some aggregation or filter to get rid of 1 pixel regions of a different class. Also, a smaller file size.
Lastly, I’d like to add a caveat: Since the agriculture data came from MAPI, I don’t know how they will react to a processed, anonymized and pixelated version of their data being uploaded to OSM. We are working on mapping agriculture with a 10*10 meter resolution from remote sensing and will happily share it when it’s done. The open landscape categories are based solely on remote sensing data and can be freely added to OSM. The subcategory of planted conifer forests, if you see that it does not improve on the current map, can be merged back with the rest of the woody vegetation category it was split from.