This is something that has recently come up as part of the Atlas project, so I thought I would put it to everyone to see what you all think.

Quite simply the question is should all elven forest province be changed to */9 provinces. (* being the population level). In the ruins of empire book, looking at all of the elven lands there seems to be no standard to how they are treated. It is stated that elves do not reduce the source potential of their lands because they live in harmony with it.

Rhuobhe for example was 2/9 despite being a mountain province (look at the map) instead of a forest. Surely that province should be 2/7 (low mountains) instead?

The Sielwode is all over the place. It is comprised entirely of ancient elven forests (source potential 9), but seems to mainly be */6 provinces (yet the source potential of even a normal forest is 7 not 6). Tuarhievel has similar irregularities, with no obvious pattern to how the population/source level were decided on, most of the source levels are around 5 or 6, despite the fact that elven populations are not supposed to reduce the source potential of a province.

Then we move onto Rjurik. There things get even stranger. In Lluabaight the wizards add up to generally around 9 levels of source holdings, but the provinces only have 7-8 levels of source potential. So either elven population levels can count as source levels, or all the provinces in Lluabraight are */9.

In Khinasi we are back to the strange system of varying source potential again. It is an entirely elven realm, but the source levels vary from 4-7. Then in Rhuannach, the source potentials suddenly jump and source levels there vary from 6-8, despite (and this is the really stupid part) 20% of the population there being human.

Then we get to Brechtur and Vosgaard where the two elven realms mention (Coullabhie and Cwmb Bheinn) all have */9 levels.

The only reason I can see for the difference is that each region was written by different authors, with Ed Stark writing both Vosgaard and Brechtur, the two regions where elven realms seem to behave as they should, and Rich Baker wrote Ruins of Empire and the Khinasi expansion, where they jump all over the place.

So the question is, what should we do for the updated Atlas. Follow the current levels, or change all elven realms or assume that ancient elven forests have a source potential of 9 and that elven populations do not reduce this?