Talk:Tag:natural=heath

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Discuss Tag:natural=heath here:


Multipolygon

Is there any real reason why this shuldn't be applied to multipolygons? --bigshot (talk) 14:42, 23 June 2023 (UTC)

Rendering of heath

As heath is often found near woods or forests, I would suggest using a color so that it is easy to see that it is different from these. In the Netherlands heath is usually rendered as pink or purple, the color of flowering heather (Ericaceae).

User:Paulb 08:28, 23 February 2009

I found that mapnik is actually using color #FFFFC0 (yellow) and inserted a new picture with that color. I still think pink or purple is better suited.

--Paulb 21:26, 23 February 2009 (UTC)

I'd like to suggest #F8C0D9 for heath:

PW 23:07, 24 February 2009 (UTC)

difference to scrub

Could someone please point out the difference to natural=scrub, thanks. --Fröstel 15:30, 7 July 2009 (UTC)

A heath has none (or very little) vegetation with stiff wooden trunks; mostly flowers, hay, grass and the like. Alv 11:57, 8 July 2009 (UTC)
So generally "scrub" has more vegetation than "heath"? That seems to fit with wiktionary definition "A thicket or jungle". Someone should create the scrub page, and cross-link them.
-- Harry Wood 13:05, 8 July 2009 (UTC)
This requires more clarification. The basic wikipedia article on Heath shows a picture of grassland with a small amount of scrub so is not reliable. Heaths are usually dominated by low-growing ericaceous shrubs (heathers in N. Europe). For a detailed typology of heathland vegetation in the British Isles see the following wikipedia article [1]. Scrub is typically seen as a transitional state between grassland and wood, and will contain small trees and large shrubs. In the British National Vegetation Classification these plant communities are treated as a sub-set of woodland (e.g., scrub dominated by Goat Willow and Buddleia (common along abandoned railway lines, e.g., Epilobio-Salicetum), Blackthorn thickets (spinneys), Hawthorn scrub). Other examples of scrub communities would include Maquis and Garrigue in the mediterranean and Chapparal. in N. America. It seems useful to list example locations of both types on OSM:
Heath: all from NW Europe. Many of these heath plant communities were created, and are maintained through human intervention: primarily by preventing growth of trees.
  • Lüneburger Heide. See wikipedia.
  • Dunwich Common. Not mapped as heath, but this is a classic location.
  • Chobham Common. British Army training ground.
  • North York Moors. One of many upland locations in Britain dominated by heather (Calluna vulgaris) moorland. Many of these areas are maintained as grouse moors. If not covered by trees or rocks many areas of Britain over 600m will consist of this vegetation.
  • Dolomiti. Again not mapped, but under Piz Boe there are extensive areas of heath dominated by Erica carnea. A common vegetation type above and around the treeline (Erico-Pinetea).
Scrub: harder to find as in NW Europe this is usually mapped only for small areas. I can't find any good locations easily at the moment, but will have another look soon, and also see if I can get a decent set of photos of the various vegetation types.
-- SK53 14:02, 8 July 2009 (UTC)
We could maybe improve the tagging scheme for these things in genearal. There's lots of words we could use for natural land area tags: "prairie", "plain", "steppe", "savanna", "tundra", etc... but often the difference on the ground will be quite difficult to judge. I'm sure when these tags were first added, nobody was really thinking through what the best words would be to form useful distinct classifications. -- Harry Wood 09:02, 9 July 2009 (UTC)
There is a huge amount of information about vegetation and biotope classification, much of it useful for OSM. As per usual Europe and North America dominate: although these means that really only tropical biotopes have poor information coverage. A useful place to start is the (British) National Biological Gateway's Habitat Directory, which provides lists and information about various widely used classifications. The three which might be of immediate interest are: JNCC Phase 1, Corine and EUNIS. Corine data are gradually been made available on suitable license terms for many European countries: see WikiProject Corine Land Cover and particularly Corine data overlaid OSM around Briancon. A proposed mapping of CORINE types to OSM tags is WikiProject Corine Land Cover/Tagging scheme. As usual the OSGB gets in the way of using any UK data, as does the fact that most organisations actively collecting this data make use of OSGB licensed products in the process. For instance the Countryside Commission for Wales can make available masses of detail at a scale of 1:25000. SK53 10:11, 9 July 2009 (UTC)
You can walk overland through and around heath as long as you remembered to wear your gaiters. You have to bash your way (rather unproductively) through scrub.
--Hamish 18:37, 3 May 2010 (UTC)
I think this is a very good operational criterion actually. Much like the distinguishing feature of river vs stream that we have elsewhere (you can jump across a stream o a good day) Deuar (talk) 19:44, 22 November 2022 (UTC)