Poor low-zoom generalization of linear water features comprised of areas

[bdon]

Location https://maps.protomaps.com/#tiles=https://build.protomaps.com/20231225.pmtiles&map=7.96/4.732/-74.904&theme=light&renderer=maplibregl

Screenshots

The key issue here is our area filter around zooms 6-8. A polygon feature for water will become close to 0 area. If that's filtered out and represents the width of river, we get discontinuous rivers like in the above screenshot. Our possible solutions:

1. Use Natural Earth to a deeper zoom level, but this won't have enough detail.
2. Make the area filter more lenient, but this will also increase tile size by adding in more isolated small lakes.
3. Continue with roughly the same area threshold but start visualizing centerlines from zoom 6 instead of zoom 9. This will eliminate the discontinuous areal rivers, as long as there's a centerline mapped in OSM. This will also increase the tile size.

Also investigating a polygon merge + area filter as a better solution.

@makella @nvkelso

[bdon]

This affects London (Thames) as well