Landcover
 Feature page: Landcover
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| Description |
| Is used to describe the physical material at the surface of the earth. Land covers include grass, asphalt, trees, bare ground, water, etc. |
| Tags |
Landcover is used to describe the physical material at the surface of the earth. Land covers include grass, asphalt, trees, bare ground, water, etc. This is distinct from Landuse which is describes the human use of land such as landuse=farm, landuse=retail or landuse=quarry.
Tagging of landcover is often only implied by other tags at present, for example a park may be assumed to be covered in grass, but in some places this may in fact be trees or sand or some other cover. The surface=grass tag could be used but this tag was originally created to describe the surface of linear features within a routable network and as such had values which are relevant to this purpose rather than broader landcover descriptions.
There is not currently a good tag to describe a landcover of trees as opposed to a landuse of timber production for which landuse=forest is appropriate or natural=wood for primary unmanaged woodland. The tag landcover=trees has been proposed for this purpose. In addition, landuse and landcover are often confused. For example landuse=grass actually describes a landcover, not a use. This causes problems as one can not describe an area of railway land as being primarily covered with grass as the landuse tag is used for both purposes. See the Proposed features/landcover for proposal the improve tagging of landcover.
Contents |
Surface tag
- See also: Surface
Other considerations
This tag can also be used for tagging coastline surfaces, seabed surfaces, and intertidal surfaces. See seabed_surface=* and INT 1 symbols for more information.
Example of current landcover tagging
The following list is very incomplete. Please add to to. The table is sortable by clicking on the relevant column heading:
| Purpose | Category | Comment |
|---|---|---|
| Bog | Natural | natural=wetland and wetland=bog |
| Bare earth | ||
| Grass | Natural | Currently landcover is implied by the use of landuse=grass, leisure=park, surface=grass or natural=meadow etc. |
| Gravel | Natural | surface=gravel |
| Marsh | Natural | natural=wetland and wetland=marsh |
| Mangrove | Natural | natural=wetland and wetland=mangrove |
| Mud | Natural | natural=mud |
| Pebblestone | Natural | natural=pebblestone |
| Reedbed | Natural | natural=wetland and wetland=reedbed |
| Saltmarsh | Natural | natural=wetland and wetland=saltmarsh |
| Sand | Natural | natural=sand |
| Sea | Natural | The natural=coastline tag is used to define the boundary between land and the sea (at the high water mark). The boundary between the land and the sea is rich in different landuses, see 'gravel', 'mangrove', 'saltmarsh', 'sand', 'swamp' and 'tidal flat'. |
| Swamp | Natural | natural=wetland and wetland=swamp |
| Tidal flat | Natural | natural=wetland and wetland=tidalflat |
| Trees | Natural | Currently the landuse=forest or natural=wood are used but neither of these work well for planted and managed trees in a park for example. |
| Water | Natural | waterway=riverbank,natural=water,man_made=reservoir. See also: 'sea'. |
