As a photographer I am working on a project focussing on the “continental divide” in England. Well known is the continental divide in the US, a natural border marking the line where rivers run west, towards the Pacific Ocean, and rivers run east towards the Atlantic Ocean.
While researching places whom lie on the continental divide in England - the website openrivers.net highlight the river basins (red lines on the map) - OPENRIVERS - Map - I would like to mark this red line on OpenStreetMap.
For England the divide runs from the Pennines (Cheviot, North Pennines, Yorkshire Dales and Peak District), down through the Midlands (west of Stoke on Trent, west and south around Birmingham, north and east of Coventry), then the Cotswolds, along the North Wessex Downs, east of Salisbury to end west of Southhampton in The Channel.
Should I first ask for permission to start drawing this line as a natural feature on OSM, or just have a go?
This isn’t something that we would consider verifiable or something we would consider meaningful or useful.
It certainly isn’t something I believe should be mapped.
England has no continental divide I can think of and at what point would decide it is? and you do not even mention Wales or Scotland. Welsh rivers are pretty important in parts of England.
The North American continental divide is (1) a significant element in the regional historical tradition, (2) a common element of maps in the USA, and (3) generally on-the-ground verifiable. I don’t believe any of these is true about any of the divides in England.
Curious question: if you focus on photographing the continental divide defined by the apex of the water-shed in England, how do you define the physical characteristics of this divide and how does it manifest itself on the ground?
That’s here, on the Rochdale canal (and here on waterwaymap.org). You can see that the divide of the river systems to the east is somewhat confused by reservoirs that when there’s a bit of water about are actually joined.
Is it actually tagged as anything in OSM?
Edit: I originally wrote “Leeds/Liverpool Canal”, but that’s further over. As Richard says below (and the board actually says) this is on the Rochdale Canal
You appear to have decided where the ‘English Divide’ is, but what is your definition?
The US definition appears to be easy in that the destination is either the Atlantic or Pacific ocean named water bodies. A water body boundary issue does not appear to matter to the US definition.
The UK is surrounded by named water bodies. Which water bodies are you defining as the catchment destinations to indicate your divide? Once you have your names, please also indicate the verifiable boundaries that indicate where one water body ends and the next water body begins.
If a river flows into the English Channel, is the destination east to the North Sea or west to the Atlantic ocean? The North Sea could be viewed as a local named area of the Atlantic so not a dividing definition anyway.
So what I’m reading is that it’s an invisible or imaginary line depicting the watershed or catchment of the land, and mainly of interest to environmental and land planners, with no physical manifestation or geographical identifying feature at ground level.
That’s pretty niche and I know that in the past I was mapping drumlin and esker ridges here in Ireland, but these are tangible ridge objects which rarely appear in topological maps.
The ‘continental divide’ in my mind would be better off served as an overlay to OSM through a third-party service. In Ireland that’s done by the EPA (EPA Maps) and you can see the catchment basements and waterbodies, as well as work out a hypothetical dividing line between our ~3 seas.
