OpenGeofiction
Hello everyone!
My countries are located on the edge of a desert. I am interested in finding a way to identify a region within the desert where sand dunes are generally/typically located. Since dunes often travel, using a ‘mountain’ marker would not be suitable.
Thoughts?
Discussion
Comment from Sarepava on 20 December 2016 at 01:45
Dunes move and shift like waves - mappers don’t consider them permanent enough to be tagged as mountains.
Comment from Luciano on 20 December 2016 at 02:05
Sarepava is right that in general, dunes, since they are “movable” features, should not be mapped. The area where dunes occur should typically be mapped as “natural=sand”. There is, in fact, an OSM tag “natural=dune” but since it is not included in the standard render, and given Sarepava’s caveat, I would recommend against trying to use it. If you wanted to add some geographic interest to an area with dunes, you might try interspersing areas tagged “natural=scrub” or “natural=bare_rock”, etc., with “natural=sand”. This could lead to some nice appearance on the map. I wish I could find some good examples from OSM, but there seem to be very few. Perhaps a hint of what’s possible with coastal dunelands in Oregon, here. These influenced some coastal dunes in Tárrases, here.
Comment from isleño on 20 December 2016 at 06:53
I like Luciano’s suggestion of showing dunes by interspersing natural=sand with natural=bare_rock or something. And there are some places in the world with relatively stable dunes — for example the major dunes at Great Sand Dunes National Park in Colorado haven’t moved much in at least 140 years, and are mapped with peaks in OSM. (I’ve hiked up that “High Dune” and it is a crazy experience… something like that would make a great tourist attraction for any desert country.) I have some smaller dunes at Uuyawa in Onnutu, which may well be geologically dubious, but I do like them a lot.
Comment from wangi on 20 December 2016 at 11:23
Lots of dunes have fences used to stabilise them; for example: Dunas de Maspalomas.