Just to give the perspective from another language (Swedish, though also having worked with landcover/landuse classification, and additionally being fluent in german though I don’t know if that influences it) (and who also happens to have harvester working in his forest right now):
In daily speech, we’d call it all “skog”, though it’s possible to be more specific, for example “skogsdunge” (small area of forest, usually within a field or residential area, normally no economic value (that is, no forestry activities), I’d tag that as natural=woods), “naturskog” (any size, no forestry but is let to grow naturally, commonly, but not exclusively, part of nature reserves, I’d tag that as natural=woods) or “skogsskifte” (part of a forest with forestry activities, roughly 1:1 with the parcels in the forest, I’d tag that as landuse=forest though for the entire forest, not on individual parcels).
Since so much of our country is forest, and at least in “my” part of the country the wast majority of that is used for economic value, I usually tag all forest areas over about a hectare with landuse=forest, since that’s a pretty safe bet and actually differentiating between “naturskog” and economic forest usually requires on-the-ground knowledge (and most of my mapping is armchair mapping).
Having worked some with landuse/landcover classification in a previous job, I also want to add some input on that (general) topic;
To begin with, the differentiation between the two is very hard for most people, which is something OSM should take into account (so that we don’t raise out entry bar too high).
But, there definitely is a significant difference between the two, though they aren’t completely orthogonal. As an example, a landuse of “forestry” would usually contain landcover such as “trees”, “scrubs” and “grass”, with some “water”, “road” and “wetland” interspersed. A landuse of “industry” on the other hand would contain landcover such as “built area”, with some “water”, “grass” and “road” as well. But these aren’t rules; a landuse of “forestry” could for example also contain a small section of “built area” with a logging cabin.
Landuse is often more “coarse” than landcover, an entire neighborhood could have the landuse “residential”, but within it there can be landcover of “building”, “grass”, etc. Though depending on how detailed one wants to get it is also possible for landuse to be hierarchical (e.g. a small vegetable garden, within a residential garden, within a larger residential area). Currently, I tag landuse=farmland excluding impediments and ditches, though technically they are part of the landuse, according to some definitions. All of earth is covered by some landcover, while not every square meter has a use (i.e. the ocean, large tundras, etc.), though it’s not always possible to easily tell if there’s a use (one would have know some forestry to be able to tell if a forest is actively forested and thus well kept, or is just let to grow without any intention to use it for anything). Landuse can overlap (a ditch between an industrial complex and a residential neighborhood, used to drain both, would be included in both), landcover is (usually) exclusive.
Right now, this is handled… weirdly in OSM, since there is no clear distinction between landuse and landcover. I have actually talked to a person who choose not to use OSM because of this, that’s only one data point, but that means that at least one person was put off by the current state.
That said, maybe there is a way forward to keep the current tagging scheme with minor changes that’ll work out for most producers and consumers and reduce the current confusion. But given that most of the geospatial world handles it as landuse+landcover despite the confusion for newcomers makes me doubt that.
I think it would make sense to introduce a more clear distinction in landuse and landcover in OSM, because I think the current state of affairs hinders us more than a change would. Though maybe we can do without any new keys, just refining the existing ones?
Most values of natural=* already map quite nicely to most common cases of landcover except built/exploited landcover, but that’s also covered already (by building=*, area:highway=*, etc.). So rather than introducing a new key, we could maybe just go through the landuse and natural keys and move individual ones between them (if required)?
Coupled with clarifying the distinction in the wiki, especially for newcomers, and possibly adjusting presets (maybe all landuse should be called e.g. “Used for forestry”), I think we could get quite far in improving the situation, without introducing major sweeping changes. We’d have to document clearly that natural=* means (non-artificial) landcover so that it does not get diluted again, but I think it should be doable to keep it clearer if it’s just documented.
I also propose that we try to keep this topic about discussing how we could change, and anyone who wants to discuss that a change isn’t necessary or worth it should create a new, separate thread.
