Tag:natural=water

Used to map all inland bodies of water, both naturally occurring & man made.

How to use

Draw a closed way creating an area, and tag it with natural=water. If the area contains islands or is too big to map with a single way, create a relation:multipolygon .

It is acceptable, but undesirable, to map this feature with a single node, if its extents aren't known.

natural=water is a parent tag to generally describe inland areas of water. It works as a stand alone tag, but if the type/usage of the water body is known it's preferable to specify it by additionally adding water=*.

For details on how to map specific features refer to the list in water=* and then select the required feature.

Water features not using the natural=* tag

• natural=coastline - For the sea (ocean), including marginal areas such as tidal channels, bays, lagoons and estuaries.
• natural=wetland - A land area that is saturated with water, either permanently or seasonally.
• landuse=salt_pond - For salt evaporation ponds.
• leisure=swimming_pool - For open-air, man-made swimming pools.

See also

• Key:waterway - To map the linear flow of water, such as rivers, canals, streams, using a way.

• JOSM plugin scanaerial works like OCR for water. You need 1 click per lake.

Possible tagging mistakes