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I understand from the wiki that areas tagged natural:beach should only be mapped down to high water springs. For areas like the West coast of Scotland with relatively high tidal ranges ( up to 6 metres ). I think this gives an unrealistic idea of the size of the beach or sandy area.

(view this in a side-by-side comparison and on osm.org) There is an area to North East of Stornoway on the Isle of Lewis which is where two rivers flow out into a sea loch and there is an area of a few square kilometres which is sandy at low tide and floods completely at mean high water springs. It also contains a few small islands. The current satellite image shows it at quite a low tide. Bing maps itself has currently a rather simplistic rendering of the area. The Ordnance Survey OpenData Streetview data gives a good rendering of the area, I was attempting to use that and Mapbox Satellite as a source.

I am a bit unclear on how to map and tag this area? I understand we're not supposed to tag for the renderer but I would like it to tag it accurately and for it to be rendered realistically. Perhaps I have just been impatient with the amount of the time it take for the tiles to be rendered again.

asked 28 Oct '14, 20:48

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seumas
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edited 28 Oct '14, 23:44

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aseerel4c26 ♦
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The coastline is mapped to mhws http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Tag:natural%3Dcoastline so it would be ideal if a way to map beaches to both high water and a low water levels (like mhw spring and mlw neap) could be agreed to. Would be reliant on obtaining hydro data from expert groups or by dedicated local mappers on the ground but worth the effort where there are wide areas of beach exposed on low tides and is quite useful information for the community making use of such areas.

(29 Oct '14, 01:25) nevw

In this case I would likely tag the relevant parts as:
natural=wetland
wetland=tidalflat
tidal=yes

and possibly:
surface=sand

There are some OpenSeaMap related tags that may also apply but the OpenSeaMap tagging recommendations are more than a little wooly at the moment (seamark:seabed_area:surface=sand??) so it might be an idea to hold off on those for now.

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answered 25 Nov '14, 23:25

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InsertUser
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accept rate: 19%

edited 25 Nov '14, 23:27

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question asked: 28 Oct '14, 20:48

question was seen: 4,404 times

last updated: 25 Nov '14, 23:27

NOTICE: help.openstreetmap.org is no longer in use from 1st March 2024. Please use the OpenStreetMap Community Forum