Plantations : woods, forests or something else?

Poplars at Lakenheath
CC-BY-SA 2.0   © Copyright Alison Rawson and licensed for reuse under this Creative Commons Licence.

One type of woodland area I have alluded to a couple of times in the past are plantations (see here and here). I've always been frustrated at not having found good illustrations, but in the past couple of weeks I've noted a few which either already have good open images available or I've been able to snap a picture myself.

Plantations run the gamut from small areas to fully-fledged forests. In general what connects them is that the trees are planted in orderly rows, and the plantation has an expected lifetime, after which the trees will be harvested or replanted. Photographs enable some of the variety to be shown. In turn this should highlight the sorts of information we might want to capture by OpenStreetMap tags.

Spring Woodland

Last Sunday we had fantastic weather, and where I'm staying in Berkshire I have countryside within a couple minutes walk. I therefore went out for what was supposed to be a short walk before lunch, but didn't get back until mid-afternoon.

I know the area well, and it's pretty well mapped, although there's plenty of scope for refinement because the bulk of the mapping was done purely by GPS before any aerial imagery was available. I was not planning any mapping activities at all, but as it turned out I realised this is a near perfect time for getting to grips with some of the complexities of mapping woodlands.

Wood Anemones, Bisham Woods
copyright mausboam