I've done my first import! Now on OpenStreetMap: the military establishments of southern New Mexico (USA), far west Texas, and the Tularosa Basin.

The areas I've imported:

• White Sands Missile Range


• Fort Bliss, including the sub-ranges:
  
  • Fort Bliss Castner Range
  
  
  • Fort Bliss McGregor Range


• Holloman Air Force Base


• San Andres National Wildlife Refuse (not a military installation, but within WSMR)

For those not in the know, White Sands Missile Range is home to many harbinger-of-the-end-of-the-world type events, including the location of the Trinity Site, where the world's first atomic weapon was detonated (yes, I've plans to map that next).

Nestled within these installations is White Sands National Monument, whose boundaries on OpenStreetMap are unfortunately wrong (see my previous post about the inaccurate federal lands shapefile).

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A public service announcement: if you want to import federal lands boundaries in the USA, don't use fedlandp020.shp!

This file is distributed via nationalatlas.gov, and subselections are distributed via various state agencies and elsewhere. As noted on the OpenStreetMap mailing lists, the resolution of this file is very low—which I can confirm, I've seen land boundaries off as much as a mile! Along with survey, I've also confirmed this against USGS DRGs/topographic maps, which unlike the shapefile, appear to have accurate boundaries.

A few features that have been imported onto OSM with this data. Nearby to me is White Sands National Monument. Here, boundaries are important—one wrong step and you're off national monument property onto an active military bombing range. Of course, I'm being hyperbolic, but the point is that this data (now unfortunately on OSM) is very wrong.

I've made a note on the Potential Datasources wiki page.

For more accurate boundaries, find the GIS data for the appropriate agency rather than using this inaccurate, all-in-one dataset. For example, I've found DoD boundaries from the US Census' TIGER, US Forest Service boundaries from the USDA, etc.

OpenStreetMap Geolocate is a user script that adds a "Geolocate me" link next to the OpenStreetMap.org search box. If your browser supports it and you've granted permission, clicking on this link will center your map window to your location, as reported by your browser via the HTML 5 geolocation API.

Say you've taken your laptop to a new cafe or conference—as soon as you open up OpenStreetMap, you can hit the "Geolocate me" link and quickly see what's around you, without fiddling with search or endlessly dragging the slippy map. Or, better yet, quickly add what's missing.

This definitely needs to be built into the OpenStreetMap website.

On most browsers, the geolocation API uses Google Location Services or Skyhook, which determine your location based on nearby wireless 802.11 access points. However, some browsers, like Firefox 3.6 on Linux, can talk to gpsd and your GPS unit, so geolocation can get quite accurate.

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