Proposal:Dehesa

Dehesa
Proposal status:	Abandoned (inactive)
Applies to:	area
Definition:	New land use type for dehesas
Rendered as:	Meadow green with dark-green dots
Draft started:	2019-08-30

Proposal

Although there is a general consensus that we should keep things as simple as possible concerning land use tags, their current structure reflects mainly the types of land you would find in Britain or places with a similar climate. Some of them can be adapted to other climates, but sometimes you come across areas that are difficult to fit in the existing scheme. One of such areas is, in my opinion, the Spanish dehesa (Portuguese montado).

Rationale

A dehesa is a type of man-made land use that has existed for centuries in the Southwestern quarter of the Iberian Peninsula. It is a sparsely-treed forest (Quercus species) in which the ground is cultivated or used as pasture for grazing animals.

Examples

Please refer to the Wikipedia article on dehesas to see more information and images.

https://www.dehesamontado.eu/index.php/en/

Tagging

I suggest adopting the tag landuse=dehesa for this type of land use (or landuse=dehesamontado, combining the Portuguese and Spanish names for it). There is a suggestion to use grassland=dehesa, but this is not accurate, since a dehesa can be a combination of farmland and forest (with no grassland).

Discrimination

A dehesa is not just a sparsely-treed forest, because there's farmland/pastures among the trees.

A dehesa is not just farmland, because it's an area covered by trees.

A dehesa is not a meadow, because instead of pastures it can be used for agriculture (cereals/sunflowers).

A dehesa is not a savanna, because savannas are natural regions and dehesas are man-made.

Applies to

Areas

Rendering

I would suggest using a meadow-coloured background with dark-green points symbolising the trees.

Comments

Please comment on the Talk:Proposed features/Dehesa.