Talk:Tag:natural=riverbed

riverbed not commonly used this way in English?

The wikipedia link goes to a disambiguation page, google search for "riverbed" shows nothing related so it seems to be a rare word and search for "riverbed geography" shows use as either wadi or either streambed. Seems like our riverbed is the translation from some European language. Should we leave it this way and simply enact whatever evolved as common use on OSM as "our" definition? RicoZ (talk) 15:43, 28 July 2017 (UTC)

If I understand correctly from wikipedia the term 'stream bed" is the area where the water is under normal water flow, while "flood plain" is the area where that is covered at high flow conditions. Considering that the wiki definition currently contains "this area would be typically larger than the area defined by riverbanks" as the definition, I think what is meant should actually be "flood plain". Dikkeknodel (talk) 14:44, 28 March 2018 (UTC)

I agree that this terminology is not commonly used this way. The Wikipedia article has a better definition. The river bed is the water area under "average" flow conditions, while river bank should cover the area between higher flow (bankfull) where clear "Banks" can be seen. Flood plain would be really hard to delineate and demarcate. Different flooding flow rates will have different flooding extents. Mullenkamp1 (talk) 18:32, 4 January 2020 (UTC)

waterway or natural?

The question has been raised whether it wouldn't be better to call it waterway=riverbed - seems better to me.RicoZ (talk) 11:58, 1 August 2017 (UTC)

True islands and distinct areas within riverbed

The question is how to map distinct areas within riverbeds such as vegetation patches. If mapped as inner of multipolygons they would be technically "true islands" not sharing any semantics with the enclosing riverbed areas. True islands within riverbeds also exist and need to be distinguished from this. RicoZ (talk) 12:02, 1 August 2017 (UTC)

New proposal

After going through current usage patterns I concluded that there are 3 more or less incompatible interpretations of how natural=riverbed works. As I consider waterway=riverbed the more logical choice anyway I have started a draft for a proposal User:RicoZ/waterway=riverbed RicoZ (talk) 13:14, 9 August 2017 (UTC)