Improve natural=heath color

[matthijsmelissen]

The following issue has been moved over from trac:

Nyah. I think that current heath color is inharmonious. I propose to replace the color on #ddebbb (see the bottom picture).

[Rovastar]

We could probably have a whole discussion about blending many of the array of different green we have into just a few shades.

Do we need to have different greens for everything?

No doubt we will get a lot of grief from the community if we change anything.

[matthijsmelissen]

In the Netherlands, heath is always rendered purple on maps: Example. How do topographic maps in other countries render heath?

[matthijsmelissen]

In the Netherlands, heath is always rendered purple on maps. How do topographic maps in other countries render heath?

Still curious about this. Is the purple=heath rendering a Netherlands-only thing? The old example is down, here is a new example.

[matkoniecz]

Difference between natural=heath and natural=scrub is not great. Maybe render both in the same style (using current natural=scrub rendering)? Or in very similar styles like wetland (#1497 by @imagico)?

[matkoniecz]

@math1985

is the purple=heath rendering a Netherlands-only thing?

heaths in Poland are quite rare, but I remember map or two marking them as purple, some used symbols (symbols were not really rereadable so this map would be a poor source of inspiration).

In Poland typical heath looks like on this image:

maybe it is also true in Netherlands and this is source of using purple colour for marking them?

I thought about using natural=scrub symbol, with plant recoloured to purple. Unfortunately it is not true that typical heath will be associated with purple - see images on https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heath

[imagico]

In principle there is of course more or less a continuum between a dense forest and a very sparse heath but in general a typical scrubland and a typical heathland are distinct enough to warrant different rendering. Abuse of the tags notwithstanding heathlands are distinct habitats characterized by distinct species of scrubs and only exit under certain conditions, they are not just relatively low growing variants of normal scrubland.

Practically of course both natural=scrub and natural=heath are often abused to tag less dense parts of the higher growing vegetation, i.e. natural=scrub is frequently used for open woodlands with scattered but full grown trees and natural=heath is frequently used for grasslands with scattered larger scrubs. Both are wrong of course. Ideally there should be tags to document secondary vegetation layers in addition to the dominating type of cover so this could all be addressed properly.

Just for understanding: natural heathlands are mostly limited to maritime and polar/mountain climates, in Europe they occur primarily near the Atlantic coast. Anthropogenic heaths OTOH also occur in central, eastern and especially southern Europe where human influence limits growth of larger trees and scrubs.

In the eastern Mediterranean for example grazing has lead to sparse heathland being a widely dominating type of vegetation like here:

It would be very wrong and misleading to equate that to the higher growing scrublands typical for the western Mediterranean like here:

[matkoniecz]

I opened #1733 intended to fix this problem.

[matkoniecz]

@imagico

In principle there is of course more or less a continuum between a dense forest and a very sparse heath

Is it also OK to consider heath as something between scrub and grassland? It may lead to something like

[imagico]

Differences are multi-dimensional here, there are at least:

• the basic vegetation type dimension (woody/herbaceous)
• the height of the vegetation (with the heath/grassland->scrub->wood succession)
• the humid/arid dimension with the extreme case of wetlands - only this is currently specifically mapped in OSM although the different classes imply differences here to some extent.
• the vegetation density (how much of the ground is vegetation covered) - different vegetation tags do not really vary in this dimension.
• the dimension of intensity of human influence. This is only mapped in case of forest/wood (which does not really work in reality) and grass (grassland indicating little human influence while meadow, possible with meadow=agricultural indicate more and garden/village_green etc. cover the extreme). For scrub you could consider orchard/vineyard as an intensive human influence variant. Heath can be fully natural as well as fairly strongly anthropogenic so it also covers a wide range in that dimension.

Since grassland and scrub differ on multiple dimensions if you'd interpolate the color this creates confusion i think. And in terms of mapper feedback this kind of coloring also encourages abuse as i described (i.e. grassland with occasional scrubs/trees as heath). And there are only four base colors applying to natural vegetation anyway so this is not a real issue i think. You could think of creating a color line from hearth via scrub to wood and make grass a completely different tone but i don't think this is feasible considering the other constraints. So the current system placing scrub and heath on different sides of the line between grass and wood is not bad i think.

[kocio-pl]

Do we still want to change the way heath is shown? Violet is used for industrial and power-related areas, so I wouldn't like to use it, but original proposition was like this:

Before After

[SomeoneElseOSM]

FWIW I went for #E6E8C5 for this: https://github.com/SomeoneElseOSM/openstreetmap-carto-AJT/blob/master/landcover.mss#L49 It's less "in your face" than the current heath colour, but still characteristic.

[kocio-pl]

AJT version:

[kocio-pl]

AJT color, Ireland - the biggest heath area I know. Z13 looks much better, with water and scrub colors being better visible (as always click to see full images)

z10 Before After

z11 Before After

z12 Before After

z13 Before After

[Tomasz-W]

@kocio-pl Are you going to do a PR with it? Test renderings looks very good :)

[kocio-pl]

I don't plan to, I'm still looking for more coders.

[Adamant36]

@kocio-pl If there is a final conclusion on what color to go with I can do a PR for it if you want. It would be nice to do something unrelated to icons for once.

[kocio-pl]

Great! It should be checked how would it look like in comparison with a new farmland color, otherwise AJT color was nice.

[Adamant36]

Before and after with new farmland color and using AJT color. before 1 after 1 before 2 after 2 before 3 after 3

[kocio-pl]

Thanks for testing, unfortunately they look like shades of the same color for me.

[Adamant36]

Yep. I agree. You can barely see the farmland if its in heath.

[kocio-pl]

Still there's a room for further searching. Darkness is OK for me, so maybe just something closer to grass for example? There might be a lot of ideas, but testing is the key.

[Tomasz-W]

related to https://github.com/gravitystorm/openstreetmap-carto/issues/3143

[Adamant36]

ddebbb (original color suggested) c5ebbb d3e5a7 c9df94 bfda80 bbebbd a7e5aa 94df97 80da84 Its interesting how the last few almost don't make the woods or the water work out anymore. I like somewhere in the c5ebbb or bbebbd range.

[dieterdreist]

Can you explain a bit more about the leading conceptual ideas of these variations?

[Tomasz-W]

@Adamant36

I've made a small visualisation comparing different green shades used in osm-carto for certain plant types. I sort it by height, and I also added @imagico proposition from http://blog.imagico.de/more-on-pattern-use-in-maps/#comment-119715 and gardens/ plant nuresies of unspecyfied height.

Aslanduse=grass and landuse=meadow has the same rendering at the moment, but they may have very different height, I think https://github.com/gravitystorm/openstreetmap-carto/issues/3143 should be done first, and as natural=heath is very similar feature to meadows and grasslands, I think we can use the same rendering for it, then we wil avoid cluttering the map with another green shade.

[Adamant36]

@Tomasz-W, I was actually thinking the same thing. I thought id test it more anyway though. Scrub needs to be dealt with to. I was actually was going to see if you could make a color thing like that. So good idea. I guess the first thing to do is deal with #3143.

[jeisenbe]

"natural=heath is very similar feature to meadows and grasslands, I think we can use the same rendering for it" I'm not sure. Heath is made of dwarf-shrubs, which are woody perineal plants. In subartic and alpine areas these may be stunted trees.

It's quite different to walk through small bushes and shrubs, compared to a grassy field.

I also disagree with the idea that natural=grassland and landuse=meadow imply tall grasses. Grazed pasture is also tagged with landuse=meadow, and natural grasslands may be grazed (eg by elk and deer in North America, and various animals in Africa).

Also, grasses may never have time to grow tall in semi-arid or arid climates. This idea of tall meadows and grasslands seems to be specific to a certain climate and landuse, and does not fit my experience in North or South America.

[Adamant36]

@jeisenbe, do you have any opinion on the difference between a heath and a scrub? They seem very similar to me. As they are both made up of woody plants, but they don't use the word heath in America where I map. So I might be wrong. If heath and scrub are essentially the same thing, maybe they should be rendered the same or very similar. Especially if they are never mapped next to each other and are essentially just regional terms for the same thing.

In my opinion grassland and meadow are essentially the same thing. Except for the intentional usage of the grassy area for grazing or not by farmers. So I don't know how or if they should be rendered differently or not. Grazing land might be better categorized/rendered like an off shot of farmland. Since that's what it is in my mind, an extension of agriculture usage. Its often "managed" also. Although it wouldn't work to use the same color as farmland for it. Since it would confuse it with crop land. So I don't know. Maybe grass raised and managed for grazing/hay purposes could be considered a crop though. Having different crops rendered might help with that.

[jeisenbe]

As a Californian / Oregonian, I did not recognize “heath” either, but I also had to look up “scrub”. In Siskiyou County we called scrublands “brush”, and in Southern California there are extensive “Chaparral scrublands.”

But we use the British terminology here for the tags, so heath is the correct tag for vegetation dominated by “dwarf shrubs” (short woody-stemmed plants)

@imagico menitioned previously that heathlands in Europe are often anthropogenic; centuries of grazing by livestock or occasional mowing and burning are what prevent heath from turning back to scrubland or woodland, except in alpine, arctic and arid climates.

So in California you will find small areas of “heath” (dwarf woody plants) above the tree line in the mountains, and perhaps in the semi-arid to arid transition zones, and perhaps in rangelands that have been heavily grazed.

On Mon, Sep 17, 2018 at 4:42 AM Adamant36 notifications@github.com wrote:

@jeisenbe https://github.com/jeisenbe, do you have any opinion on the difference between a heath and a scrub? They seem very similar to me. As they are both made up of woody plants, but they don't use the word heath in America where I map. So I might be wrong. If heath and scrub are essentially the same thing, maybe they should be rendered the same or very similar. Especially if they are never mapped next to each other and are essentially just regional terms for the same thing.

In my opinion grassland and meadow are essentially the same thing. Except for the intentional usage of the grassy area for grazing or not by farmers. So I don't know how or if they should be rendered differently or not. Grazing land might be better categorized/rendered like an off shot of farmland. Since that's what it is in my mind, an extension of agriculture usage. Its often "managed" also. Although it wouldn't work to use the same color as farmland for it. Since it would confuse it with crop land. So I don't know. Maybe grass raised and managed for grazing/hay purposes could be considered a crop though. Having different crops rendered might help with that.

— You are receiving this because you were mentioned. Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub https://github.com/gravitystorm/openstreetmap-carto/issues/780#issuecomment-421820335, or mute the thread https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/AoxshC07qlw1Cv1NQ58i4Qzb8IRjSlcYks5ubqnBgaJpZM4CRmJO .

[dieterdreist]

2018-09-16 21:42 GMT+02:00 Adamant36 notifications@github.com:

do you have any opinion on the difference between a heath and a scrub? They seem very similar to me. As they are both made up of woody plants, but they don't use the word heath in America where I map.

a scrub is dense, closed vegetation, usually not easily traversable, while heath is open, scarse vegetation of certain types of grass and woody plants that can live on these less fertile soils.

So I might be wrong. If heath and scrub are essentially the same thing, maybe they should be rendered the same or very similar. Especially if they are never mapped next to each other and are essentially just regional terms for the same thing.

they are not

[jeisenbe]

Since we also want to change the scrub color, it may be necessary to change grassland color as well, to get a better heath color, which will also require changes to campsites, golf courses, leisure and parkland. I believe heath with dde8ad and scrub with d1e0b4 should work, if the other changes are made.

Here are some tests in Northern Ireland with current Farmland eef0d5, forest/wood add19e, orchard/vineyard aedfa3. With changes to: Grass/Meadow def6c0, heath dde8ad, scrub d1e0b4 and park b5e3b5, pitch b8dabd; leisure now includes golf and campsites.

Rostrevor, Northern Ireland: Lots of heath, forest and a park http://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=13/54.1072/-6.1147 Current rendering: After (heath dde8ad):

Newcastle, Northern Ireland: http://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=13/54.2141/-5.8593 Before z13 After

[Tomasz-W]

@jeisenbe Please add a few tests renderings of #d1e0b4 with 10% of this pattern https://gist.github.com/Tomasz-W/dc2b8fe24c9f50f60b49a40765835d5c

[jeisenbe]

I'm sorry, I don't understand what you mean by "10% of this pattern"? Do you want the pattern to be a light gray overlay on the d1e0b4 background, or do you want it to be a 10% darker version of d1e0b4? I may not know how to do this yet.

[Tomasz-W]

@jeisenbe I mean 10% opacity of the pattern.

[jeisenbe]

The .png files for patterns normally have a slightly darker color than the background, in this style.

Unfortunately we are not able to use svg patterns directly due to limitations in mapnik+carto

Would you be able to remake this into a pixel-aligned png file using color 92ab77, and also try with a3b886?

However, I do think that heath should have a random pattern, as used for forest, scrub and other natural landcovers.

I've made some random png patterns to compare, with http://www.imagico.de/map/jsdotpattern.php There's no perfect heath pattern there; we may need a new icon to use. But I've tried a couple options:

Round shrub pattern with 92ab77 for pattern (d1e0b4 background)

Tall bushy pattern (a3b886)

Short bushy pattern (92ab77)

These images were not pixel aligned; this makes it look a little more natural and random. But we could try pixel-aligning if we want a sharper, more regular look.

[jeisenbe]

But I still believe heath should get a different background color; as long as we keep it on the browner side of the spectrum it shouldn't be a problem.

Here are some possible patterns for heath with #aeb57c for the pattern and #d5dca1 for the background. It might be best to make an entirely new icon; I could also try a slightly darker color for the pattern:

Round pattern #aeb57c (on background #d5dca1 )

Tall bushy #aeb57c

Short bushy #aeb57c

Scrub-like #aeb57c (It would be better to design a new svg pattern; I've just shrunk down the shrub icon to 0.8)

[jeisenbe]

Looking at the scrub patterns and forest, I believe that aeb57c may be too dark for the d5dca1 background. Here is b8c187 pattern on d5dca1:

Another option:

Ireland test areas:

Kilbroney park http://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=14/54.1072/-6.1147 Current d6d99f:

Bushy b8c187 on d5dca1:

Shrubby b8c187 on d5dca1:

Coastal Ireland, heath mixed with grass, woods, and residential with houses, also next to a beach: http://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=5/54.0578/-6.1949 Before d6d99f:

Bushy b8c187 on d5dca1:

Shrubby b8c187 on d5dca1:

Glen River, near Newcastle http://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=14/54.1991/-5.9125 Before d6d99f:

Bushy b8c187 on d5dca1:

Shrubby b8c187 on d5dca1:

Garry Bog Bogs use the heath color as the background, although the pattern is different (so this is unchanged). Here is a comparison of the background before and after: Before d6d99f:

After d5dca1:

It's a subtle change, but perhaps it is enough, with the addition of a pattern at zoom 14 and up.

New Scrub plus New Heath - test area Scrubby heath d5dca1 with scrub d1e0b4

Bushy heath with new scrub

Probably the second symbol is better, or perhaps we should try something different for the symbol.

[Adamant36]

I like the bushy heath with new scrub color.

[Adamant36]

Any chance of testing it on a higher zoom level in different/more diverse areas?

[jeisenbe]

Here I've changed the heath background color to dde5a9, slightly lighter, and the pattern is also a little lighter to match: c0c98e. This is about as much as it can be lightened without getting problems with contrast against grass color, unless we change grass/meadow as well.

Looks ok next to beach, grass, wood and residential:

Ok with streams, rivers, paths and tracks:

OK contrast with the new scrub color and pattern, also with parks and farmland:

Color comparisons: http://davidjohnstone.net/pages/lch-lab-colour-gradient-picker#eef0d5,dde5a9,c0c98e,def6c0,dde5a9,c0c98e,d1e0b4,dde5a9,c0c98e,add19e,dde5a9

The png files are available at https://github.com/jeisenbe/openstreetmap-carto/tree/heath-scrub/symbols/

[Adamant36]

Thanks. I think it looked slightly better when it was darker like in the last examples. It stands out a little to much in the lighter examples for my taste. Other then that I think it looks good and is good to go. I say you stop tweaking it and do a few comparison of the darker and lighter colors in the same places. Then leave it for a few days so other people can have time to provide feedback. After that, it should be PR worthy.

[Tomasz-W]

Would you be able to remake this into a pixel-aligned png file

@jeisenbe Here you are: png: https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/File:Meadow_pattern_proposal.png svg: https://gist.github.com/Tomasz-W/dc2b8fe24c9f50f60b49a40765835d5c

[jeisenbe]

@Adamant36 here are some more in the Azores islands, which have a few areas with very detailed mapping of scrub, heath, grass and woods, along with some streams and intermittent streams:

Azores http://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=15/38.5627/-28.6741 z17 Before After

Caldeira Before After

Flamengos Before After

Casa-do-Cantoneiro Before After

Estrada Before After

And here is a big area of heath with intermittent streams in Northern Australia: After

(The scrub color in these pictures was ceddb0, just 1 or 2% darker than d1e0b4, but heath is still dde5a9)

[Adamant36]

Thanks again for the tests. I still think the darker ones look best, but its a superficial difference and the lighter colors for both are way better then what they currently are.

Side by side of light and dark scrub done in paint (kind of crap, but whatever).

[Tomasz-W]

I think that using this pattern for heath areas is a bad idea - we use "much spaced" (sorry I don't know how to name it) icon-based patterns rather for higher landcover (e.g. forests, scrubs), and for lower landcover we use no-pattern or simple geometrical-based dense patterns (e.g. wetlands, gardens). Mixing this 2 ways of rendering might be confusing and making hard to understand what type of landcover it is. We should keep things intuitive. That's the reason why I think that reusing rotated wetland pattern with 0.1 opacity would work here the best. Notice also that with very different patterns for scrub and heath. there is a possilibily that we would can use the same colour as their background, because of the different patterns they would be distinguished enough. I'm looking forward to see some test renderings of https://github.com/gravitystorm/openstreetmap-carto/issues/780#issuecomment-440558091 on #d1e0b4 to make sure if is it a good idea or not.

[Adamant36]

I suggest we forgo the pattern on heath for now and just focus on the color. Since its the purpose of this issue and otherwise it convolutes things to much. Once the PR for the heath color change is merge we can start a new issue for adding a pattern if need be. Its better not to mix issues though.

Also, @jeisenbe, if you don't mind id like to do the PR for this and the color change on scrub. Since you already have 4 PRs your currently working on. It would be good if you focused on getting those merged. Plus, I feel like its better/will go quicker in general if we can delegate tasks to each other and share the PRs when need be. Otherwise things risk getting spread to thin or derailing for other reasons. Especially since we only have one maintainer doing code review/PR merging at this point.

[Tomasz-W]

I suggest we forgo the pattern on heath for now and just focus on the color.

Notice that some dense pattern overlay may change colour perception, so I think that testing different options of colour + pattern at one time would be a better way of working on this ;)

[kocio-pl]

Sorry, I do not follow this discussion in details, because it's very broad and complicated issue (since this is related to other propositions of changing greens) and I have limited time for OSM lately.

I try to focus on the merging queue and release, since this is critical part now.

[Adamant36]

@kocio-pl, OK. Fair enough.

[Tomasz-W]

I think that proposed colour is too intensive/ too dark - as generally it turns out that 'the darker the green fill is, the higher plants it includes', proposed heath share breaks it imo. I'll propose some green shade for it later.