In Massachusetts, there was an effort, back in 1982, to inventory all the streams listed on the USGS maps, and assign numbers to them for later reference. This was called the “Stream and River Inventory System” (SARIS). It listed 2,027 rivers and streams. I’ve been going thru it and making sure they are on OSM (and adding the reference numbers).
I’ve currently done 312, and I just wanted to tell others about it.
Now finished the first 4 river basins – the three in Hudson, and the (large) Housatonic! A total of 248 codes (some of which weren’t drawn in yet, so I left notes about them).
(edit: To clarify – I previously did a bunch of the larger or more uniquely named rivers across the state, which is why there are 370 total tagged as of now. The 248 are the ones where I’ve checked whether they are already mapped and added notes if they aren’t.)
Now finished the next river basin, the Farmington River Basin (31) – it wasn’t too large; we’re now up to 398 tagged, and the last code entered was 7750.
The basin after this, the Westfield River Basin (32) is … not small, with about 170 tributaries to check. Glad for help, if you are so moved!
Good question! A lot of these streams are very small so I’d need to add a bunch of new items to Wikidata. And frankly, I don’t feel like fighting that battle. I would be DELIGHTED if someone else wanted to work on that; and once the linkages between the OSM relations and the Wikidata elements were made, it would be trivial to copy over the IDs to Wikidata.
Also, while I’m going thru them, I’m correcting various mistakes that were made when the streams and rivers were added, which requires looking at them on OSM, not Wikidata.
Finished the Westfield River basin (finally)! All the 167 tributaries are either added, or have notes added requesting someone draw them in. Now on to the 149 tributaries of the Dearfield River.
Finished the first page of the Dearfield River basin – now just 2 more full pages, and 8 on a third page. Then the BIGGEST one – the Connecticut River basin, with 186 tributaries.
I would be DELIGHTED if someone else wanted to work on that; and once the linkages between the OSM relations and the Wikidata elements were made, it would be trivial to copy over the IDs to Wikidata.