Key:water

+/- water Description Specification of a water body Group Natural Element help Useful combination natural=water Used combinations in World Australia/Oceania Europe (list) Asia (list) Central America (list) South America (list) Africa (list)

This tag is used to specify what type of water body is tagged with natural=water, and must be used only in conjunction with it. When the latter tag is omitted, it's up to a renderer to decide whether natural=water is assumed.

Possible Values

Tagging	Description	Sample Photo
natural=water water=lake	A lake: a body of relatively still fresh or salt water of considerable size, localized in a basin that is surrounded by land. Artificially created lakes are ponds or reservoirs. Intermittent lakes (which disappear seasonally) should be tagged with intermittent=yes; salt lakes — with salt=yes. This value should be considered default for natural=water, when no water or other descriptive tags are specified.
natural=water water=cove	A cove: a small type of bay or coastal inlet. They usually have narrow, restricted entrances, are often circular or oval, and are often inside a larger bay. May be mapped as natural=coastline.
natural=water water=lagoon	A lagoon: a body of shallow sea water or brackish water separated from the sea by some form of barrier. It's better to specify saltness of water with salt=yes/no.
natural=water water=pond	A pond: a body of standing water, man-made in most cases, that is usually smaller than a lake. Salt evaporation ponds should be tagged with landuse=salt_pond, open-air swimming pools — with leisure=swimming_pool.
natural=water water=reflecting_pool	A reflecting pool: a water feature found in gardens, parks, and at memorial sites. It usually consists of a shallow pool of water, undisturbed by fountain jets, for a calm reflective surface.
natural=water water=reservoir	A reservoir or an artificial lake is used to store water.
natural=water water=canal	A body of a canal, a man-made channel for water. Should contain waterway=canal way inside.
natural=water water=river	A body of river. Should contain waterway=river way inside.
natural=water water=oxbow	An oxbow lake: U-shaped body of water formed when a wide meander from the main stem of a river is cut off to create a lake.
natural=water water=intermittent	A of intermittent water that may or may contain water, wetlands or dry depending on time.	? Strange value, how whould you tel appart intermittent river from an intermittent lake ?

Example

For Lake Baikal area tags would be as follows:

natural=water
water=lake
name=Baikal

Rivers and Reservoirs

This tag implies that all water bodies are tagged uniformly, with natural=water and water=*. There were several cases when this pattern was broken: river bodies, reservoirs and, occasionaly, ponds. Now all those features can be tagged with natural=water, but the original tags may be preserved for legacy renderers (although there's not many cases when their processing is different from natural=water).

So, those are equivalent, while natural=water scheme is preferred:

• waterway=riverbank is the same as natural=water + water=river
• landuse=reservoir is the same as natural=water + water=reservoir
• landuse=pond is the same as natural=water + water=pond

See Also

• natural=water
• Proposed features/Water details