Managed forests with lots of inners

mboeringa · 2020-03-28T08:56:27.000Z

Hi,

Sorry to post in English here, but I noticed in some parts of Russia, and specifically this area:

https://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=10/58.6648/101.8666

that there are many patches of multipolygon forest digitized with lots of rectangular “inner holes”.

Now looking at imagery available for the area in ArcGIS Earth and Google Earth, I could well see that those patches had been cleared for harvesting trees. However, it is also very obvious from the imagery, that this is an extremely well managed forest, and most patches appear to be immediately re-planted with young trees, I can easily discern rows of small young trees in the imagery. Or maybe slightly older trees left over from a targeted clearance to make room for the main trees, so thinning out.

Whatever the exact situation, the “inners” do not seem to represent a discontinuity of the forest patches, rather just a very brief temporary clearance, or even none at all but just a thinning of trees.

So my question for the Russian community is whether these cleared or thinned patches should show up in OSM? I personally think they shouldn’t, there is still forest there, even if the density of forest cover is temporarily lowered due to thinning or clearance.

A good example is this area in Google Earth (note: doesn’t work in MS Edge):
https://earth.google.com/web/@58.80827406,101.34090138,262.74694651a,7173.09541858d,35y,359.90707496h,0t,0r

literan · 2020-03-28T10:13:43.000Z

mboeringa, we have natural=wood (not natural=forest !!) tag on “green” patches and landuse=logging on “white”. Trees do not grow immediately, it takes at least 10 years to get young tree. So, I think, it’s good mapping.

mboeringa · 2020-03-29T13:43:13.000Z

OK, thanks for the answer. I do indeed see those landuse=logging patches mapped. I agree it takes time for the forest to recover.

Mir76 · 2020-03-29T13:54:38.000Z

mboeringa:

that this is an extremely well managed forest, and most patches appear to be immediately re-planted with young trees

Nobody cares of replanting. Nature just tries to recover form wounds.