Natural

Feature page: Natural

Description

Used to describes natural physical land features, including ones that have been modified by humans.

Tags

natural=volcano natural=coastline natural=water

The natural tag is used to describes wide variety of different physical features, which are often classified by the professional community into different categories. This article provides a summary of the broadest description of what features could be considered to be 'natural' within the context of a more detail classification system.

Contents 1 Types 1.1 Conservation 1.2 Land cover 1.3 Land usage 1.4 Physical world 2 Mapping 3 See also

Types

Conservation

See also Conservation

boundary=protected_area, boundary=national_park

Land cover

See also Landcover

To describe the vegetation or physical surface of the earth: natural=fell, natural=glacier, natural=heath, landuse=grass, natural=grassland, natural=mud, natural=scree, natural=sand, natural=scrub, natural=tree, natural=wetland, natural=wood.

Land usage

See also: Landuse

To describe the use to which the area is put by humans. landuse=allotments, leisure=common, landuse=farm, landuse=forest, landuse=meadow, landuse=orchard, barrier=hedge, barrier=wall, barrier=fence, craft=*, place=hamlet, landuse=reservoir, leisure=nature_reserve, landuse=quarry,

Physical world

See also: Geological

To describe the earth and significant geological features, as distinct from landcover. natural=bay, natural=beach, natural=cave_entrance, natural=cliff, natural=coastline, natural=peak, natural=volcano, natural=stone, geological=outcrop, waterway=stream, natural=water, waterway=waterfall, natural=wetland, landuse=salt_pond.

Mapping

Many of the above features are areas and can either be created as a closed way or as a multipolygon, other such as rivers and streams are vectors and then where are the node features (such as trees). Some features, such as camp-sites, can be nodes of areas; others, including hedges, can be nodes or areas.

Where two area features meet (eg a where an area of grass area ends at a road) this can be done three ways: 1) the area uses new nodes close to the road. This is a commonly used and easy approach, but is not so accurate. Another approach, which is more accurate. is to use a enclosed way and have it share a line of nodes with the road. The best approach for large areas is to create a multipolygon from the ways that make up the edges of the feature, having split the ways that will make up the ways at an appropriate point.

See also

• key:man_made (for man-made features)
• Key:landuse (a wider range of land-uses)
• Land use and areas of natural land