Minimum recommended cliff height and terraced cliffs

Communities United States
1

There are roads in Kentucky where a ridge has been blasted to flatten out a road bed. The sides of the road have two to three meter tall “cliffs” that are terraced up the sides:

Street View

Is there a recommended minimum height for a cliff? I’m tempted to draw a few parallel cliff walls from the USGS LIDAR survey, but maybe I should skip it or just draw one. Suggestions?

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2

As with many natural features, there is no absolute measure of what makes a cliff in OSM.

But, from your description and street view, I think you’re really looking for Key:cutting - OpenStreetMap Wiki.

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3

The road is already tagged with cutting. Is this all you suggest doing?

4

I think so. Just like there’s no minimum elevation difference for natural=cliff, there’s no maximum elevation difference for cutting=*.

If you want to map the feature in detail, there’s some question of what to do with the terraces. Since these are man made and not natural, I wouldn’t use natural=* for them. You might use the undocumented man_made=cutting, which has almost 200 uses, along with cutting=* for the terraces.

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5

See also this talk page discussion:

https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Talk:Tag:natural%3Dcliff#Classification_of_drop-offs_like_cliffs_and_other_near-vertical_natural_features