Land asset (farmOS:land:1.0)

Conventions
1

This thread is for discussing the draft farmOS core convention for land assets: farmOS:land:1.0. The current draft is in the wip branch of GitHub - mstenta/farmOS-conventions, copied below:

Land Asset

Version 1.0

convention_id: "farmOS:land:1.0"
dependencies:
  - farm:farm_land

Purpose

A land asset is a unique geographic area, defined by a polygon. Land assets
are used both to provide a visual representation of specific areas of land on a
map, as well as a reference point to organize other records associated with the
geographic area.

Specification

A specific area of land MUST be recorded as a “Land” (land) asset.

Land assets MUST have a name (name).

The “Land type” (land_type) field MUST be set to indicate the primary use of
the area. Land types are provided by modules, and MAY include options like
“Field” (field), “Paddock” (paddock), or “Property” (property). If an
appropriate land type is not available, “Other” (other) MAY be selected.

Land assets SHOULD include a polygon that represents their geographic boundaries
in the “Intrinsic geometry” (intrinsic geometry) field. The “Is fixed”
(is_fixed) boolean field MUST be set to true to indicate that it has a fixed
geometry.

Generally speaking, the geometry of a land asset should not change over time. If
significant changes are made to the geographic area which necessitate changing
the polygon geometry, then best practice is to create a new land asset and
archive the old one. The exception to this is minor adjustments or corrections,
which do not indicate actual changes to the geographic area in the real world.

The “Is location” (is_location) boolean field SHOULD be set to true to
indicate that other assets can be moved to the land asset.

When a land asset is actively being managed, the Status (status) field SHOULD
be set to “Active” (active). When it is no longer being managed, it SHOULD be
set to “Archived” (archived). Land assets MAY move back and forth between
“Active” and “Archived” status depending on their management activities.

2

Some more context: we are currently working on defining a “SHMU” (Soil Health Management Unit) convention in the NRCS module for use by farms that are participating in NRCS projects that follow CEMA 216.

A SHMU is defined as (from the link above):

Soil Health Management Unit (SHMU) is one or more planning land units with similar soil type, land use, and management that can vary in size or acreage depending on soil texture, topography, and cropping system. SHMU is like a conservation management unit but designed to assess soil health status and potential limitations on soil health indicators.

The thought was that this SHMU convention would ideally extend (inherit_from) a core farmOS convention. Originally I proposed calling that convention “Land management unit” to represent a land asset that is specifically for managed practices (as opposed to something like wild land areas). Eventually the discussion led to simply calling the convention “Land asset”. I’m curious to hear what others in the community think of this.

We are also going to be defining an NRCS-specific soil testing convention for CEMA 216, which will extend from farmOS:soil-test:1.0 (Soil tests (farmOS:soil-test:1.0)), so that was also part of the reasoning for extending the SHMU convention off of a farmOS core convention.