Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Geology/Archive 1

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Banners

Should we make it explicit under Open tasks and guidelines that we will not be adding WikiProject Geology banners to talk pages where WikiProject Volcanoes or WikiProject Rocks and minerals (or even WikiProject Mountains) banners are more appropriate? --Bejnar 20:18, 29 April 2007 (UTC)

I would think no, although I do acknowledge the point of the question. My specific objection would be to the ambiguity of the phrase "more appropriate". Certainly, if an existing project has already tagged the article, and the entire content of that article relates to the scope of that given project, then certainly it would be redundant to place the banner. If the content only partially related to the express or implicit scope of another project, however, and the remaining content related to geology in some other way, then I think it would be perfectly appropriate for this project to tag the article, based on the content which falls under this project but apparently no other project. I hope that the above answer makes at least a little sense to anyone who might read it. Sorry, but it is getting a bit late here. John Carter 02:48, 30 April 2007 (UTC)
Like John, I would disagree, because in some cases there may be a blury line between two areas and an article may be equally tagged by both projects. I do agree, wherever the topic of the existing tag prevails, your suggestion makes sense. Solarapex 01:03, 2 May 2007 (UTC)

Geology of Minnesota

The Geology of Minnesota article is up for review at Scientific peer review. Any comments would be welcome! -Ravedave 05:54, 1 May 2007 (UTC)

Geologic timescale Project

Does anyone mind to take Wikipedia:WikiProject Geologic timescale under the roof of this project? It seems to be inactive. Solarapex 13:13, 1 May 2007 (UTC)

I think that is a good idea. --mav 20:50, 2 May 2007 (UTC)
Good idea. --Bejnar 15:04, 3 May 2007 (UTC)
Fully agree --Zamphuor 15:13, 3 May 2007 (UTC)


As a part of migration to this project I would like to suggest a couple of things:

Solarapex 04:32, 13 May 2007 (UTC)

I would find it very useful if dates for the following were available: North American Land Mammal Age, European Mammal Neogene, Marine isotopic stage. I have been, more or less successfully, figuring these out for the odd paleontology article, so some material is already here. If someone whips up a stub, I'll be more than happy to contribute (I'm one of the folks more concerned with the "Quaternary dirt on top of the REAL stuff", as a geologist buddy of ine put it ;-) ) Dysmorodrepanis 17:08, 15 August 2007 (UTC)

Geological advice needed

I would like to ask for advice with a discussion we are having at List of extinct animals of Europe. My point is that we should not classify extinct animals with political barriers, as it was the case with this article, see section of the same article: extinct animals of dependent territories of European countries . I believe that there were using the political definition of Europe. My question is, in which way could we classify extinct animals (fossils) with geological boundaries. Europe, Asia, Africa...? or Eurasia, America, Antartica...? I would appreciate any advice you could give us. Francisco Valverde 11:23, 12 May 2007 (UTC)

Do you mean that they are trying to include Asia Minor in Europe? The geographic definition of Europe is the Urals to the east and the waterways, Black Sea, Aegean, Mediterranean, Atlantic to the south. But since the Urals are a poor biological barrier wouldn't it be better to talk about Eurasian extinctions instead? --Bejnar 16:11, 12 May 2007 (UTC)
Well, I did propose a merge with List of extinct animals of Asia and rename it as List of extinct animals of Eurasia but up to the moment it did hasn't picked up any support. There are cases in the European article that include extinct animals of Cyprus and although Cyprus is considered to be a European country, geographically is Asia. --Francisco Valverde 11:16, 13 May 2007 (UTC)

Before Present

Could other people please look at Before Present (BP), i.e. the unit of time meaning years before 1950. Another user keeps suggesting that BP is intimately linked to radiocarbon. I have been trying to clarify that BP simply means years before 1950 regardless of the method of measurment, i.e. whether those are radiocarbon years, calendar years, ice core layers, etc. However I've been reverted several times and am tired of it now. Dragons flight 00:30, 17 May 2007 (UTC)

Quick review

Could someone with some expertise please look over Mackinac Island#Geology? This was suggested on its current FAC. The source used for it is generally accurate, but not always scientific. Geology is not my strong point, so while it all may look good to me, that does not mean it is. Mr.Z-mantalk¢ 23:18, 18 May 2007 (UTC)

I added some info - but wikireferences are not my strong point, and I screwed it up - assistance appreciated! Cheers Geologyguy 23:55, 18 May 2007 (UTC)
It looks great - Thanks! I took care of the ref, the cite template didn't work without the "title" parameter defined, but it should be fine now. Mr.Z-mantalk¢ 00:00, 19 May 2007 (UTC)

Volcanic mountains

I noticed that we do not have anything called Volcanic mountains, and created appropriate redirects. It seems to me that most people assume that 'volcanoes' means recently active volcanoes, and looking at List of volcanoes would expect to find those. I thought that long-extinct volcanoes should be called only 'volcanic mountains' and that we should split these out. The way, the truth, and the light 07:34, 20 May 2007 (UTC)

You might get more response asking this at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject_Volcanoes. Anyway, common notions aside, "volcano" does not mean "active volcano", and I hope any readers whose expectations were different treat this realisation as yet another gift of knowledge from Wikipedia. Do you believe this will make it harder for readers to find the information they want? That's the only thing that would concern me here. -- Avenue 08:56, 20 May 2007 (UTC)
I definitely think it would be more helpful to distinguish. Yes, extinct volcanoes are technically 'volcanoes', but I expect most people would not call them such. Most information of volcanoes, including our article Volcano, is largely about volcanic activity. It would be useful to have a seperate article at Volcanic mountain for the geology of volcanic formations, wouldn't it? The way, the truth, and the light 09:12, 20 May 2007 (UTC)
I posted a note at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject_Volcanoes as well as at Talk:Volcano. The way, the truth, and the light 09:14, 20 May 2007 (UTC)
This is a good catch. Solarapex 15:12, 20 May 2007 (UTC)
I agree it's useful to redirect volcanic mountain somewhere, although stratovolcano might be a better choice than volcano. But I don't agree with turning it into an article on the geology of volcanic formations in general, because many volcanic landforms are not mountains. Lake Taupo and the Columbia River Plateau come to mind, along with many smaller volcanoes. -- Avenue 16:40, 20 May 2007 (UTC)
I don't think there is anything to split. The term "volcanic mountain" is almost never used in any published book or reference about volcanoes. Checking Google, the first hits for "volcanic mountain" all refer to active, conical volcanoes, and not extinct ones, so we would be inventing a neologism by having an article by that title with content about extinct volcanoes. There is also the issue of the ill-defined term "extinct". Many volcanoes which the general public might call "extinct" are actually referred to by volcanologists as "potentially active" or even "active", because most people simply don't know any better, and grossly underestimate current and future volcanic hazards. I agree with Avenue's earlier comment, that any knowledge Wikipedia can provide by calling them "volcanoes" and dispelling these popular misconceptions is a good thing. Once a volcano, always a volcano, even if inactive or dormant or supposedly extinct.
There is, however, such a thing as a "volcanic peak" which was never actually a "volcano". These are formed by deep erosion of a large volcanic edifice, thus leaving topographically prominent peaks which are made of volcanic rock, but which were never actual volcanoes. An excellent example of such a volcanic peak is Little Tahoma Peak, the high satellite peak of Mount Rainier. LT is an erosional remnant of a formerly much-higher Mount Rainier. It is formed entirely of volcanic rock, and is nicely pointed and conical, yet it is not a volcano per se because lava never erupted from it. All of its lava erupted from the summit crater of Rainier far above, then flowed down the slopes and hardened to form the rock of LT. Later, glaciers eroded away much of this hardened lava, leaving LT standing as a glacial horn. Such erosional volcanic peaks, especially on a smaller scale than LT, are common throughout the world. In any case, I've never heard or read of such peaks being referred to as "volcanic mountains", only as volcanic peaks or sometimes (less commonly) volcanic remnants.
However, I don't think we need an article titled "volcanic peak" either, because although this term is commonly used in volcanology literature, it is mostly used to refer to actual volcanoes and not to distinguish only the erosional volcanic peaks I just mentioned. --Seattle Skier (talk) 17:13, 20 May 2007 (UTC)
Strong agreement with Seattle Skier. Cheers Geologyguy 17:19, 20 May 2007 (UTC)
Yes, I agree with Avenue and Seattle Skier too. Eve 19:58, 20 May 2007 (UTC)

'Volcanic mountain' is hardly a neologism, it's the term anyone would use to describe a mountain of volcanic origin. My proposal is that there by an article on volcanic geology, whatever it's called, distinct from volcano which essentially covers volcanic activity. The way, the truth, and the light 04:15, 21 May 2007 (UTC)

Oh, I see. Earlier above, it seemed you wanted to refer only to extinct volcanoes as volcanic mountains. But you're thinking about an article about volcanic landforms in general? That might be useful, and fun to write. However, most of that is already covered in the "Volcanic features" section of Volcano, and additional expansion could be added there. Incidentally, it really is true that the term "volcanic mountain" is not commonly used in most books or published geology papers (see the exception below). Also, I live in a city flanked by an entire range of volcanoes (I can see two major stratovolcanoes from my deck, Mount Rainier and Glacier Peak), and I rarely hear anyone refer to them as "volcanic mountains". I'm not sure where you're from, so maybe this has to do with differences in English dialects in various parts of the world, and perhaps "volcanic mountains" is commonly used elsewhere.
By the way, there is an excellent book called Volcanoes as Landscape Forms, written in 1944 by New Zealand geologist C. A. Cotton, and still a classic work which has never been superseded. It is one of the only books to concentrate on volcanoes as geological forms and as mountains, and it does actually use the term "volcanic mountains" several times. So I shouldn't discount the use of that term entirely, if some book does use it. Anyway, feel free to start a new article if you wish, but I still think it would be best to cover the material by expanding the "Volcanic features" section of Volcano. --Seattle Skier (talk) 07:03, 21 May 2007 (UTC)
I agree with Seattle Skier. I don't see a need for the term volcanic mountain, nor an article. I agree with expanding the "Volcanic features" section, if it is not clear. --Bejnar 18:15, 21 May 2007 (UTC)

1980 eruption of Mount St. Helens FAR

1980 eruption of Mount St. Helens has been nominated for a featured article review. Articles are typically reviewed for two weeks. Please leave your comments and help us to return the article to featured quality. If concerns are not addressed during the review period, articles are moved onto the Featured Article Removal Candidates list for a further period, where editors may declare "Keep" or "Remove" the article from featured status. The instructions for the review process are here. Reviewers' concerns are here. LuciferMorgan 13:18, 21 May 2007 (UTC)

Roland Bird

Anyone know anything of this American Palaoentologist? Enlil Ninlil 19:13, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

Physiography: Geology versus Geography

Just a very important question about scopes of terminology. Is an article about the "Canadian Shield" properly part of Canadian geography or geology? Is geology properly the rocks and minerals contained within the geographical area or is it the area itself? I see the term physiography getting used and that was not current in my youth. And then are these properly "regions" or "provinces"? I have seen both "Appalachian Region" and "Appalachian Province". Are any of these valid distinctions or are they synonyms? And what is the wikipedia convention on this question?

I am finding some orphan stub articles on Canadian physiographic areas and I am attaching them to their proper larger categories. For example, the Hudson Bay Lowlands exists as a stub article. This is a recognised Canadian physiographic region, but it is not labelled as such and does not appear to be linked to any larger groupings. Is it within the scope of this Geology project or does it belong elsewhere? BeeTea 01:25, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

Hello - I can only offer an opinion: to me, the word "shield" is a geologic one, not geographic, and it does refer to the area itself. However, the name "Canadian shield" has had enough popular use that it has come to suggest the physiographic and geographic area defined by the geologic shield. So current usage would make it come under both categories. So, in this particular case, I guess I would be happy for "Canadian shield" to be categorized both ways. This would not apply to other shields, though, as they have not developed the common use this one has. My 2 cents... Cheers Geologyguy 02:24, 30 May 2007 (UTC)
I agree with Geologyguy. The term could both describe the area and the geological feature. I guess in the same way that a volcano or a rift valley could. MeanStreets "...Chorizo..." 21:53, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

This is just adding to my confusion. I know the terms are interchangeable -- that is the problem. Or part of it. Let's try this: georegions, geoprovinces, geotopes. What branch of geoology is concerned with the identification, nomenclature and taxonomy of the land? Such as: Appalachian Highlands, Pacific Cordillera, Hudson Bay Lowlands, Innuitian Region, Canadian Shield, etc? Who works on locating boundaries between geologic regions and refining the hierarchy? BeeTea 00:02, 31 May 2007 (UTC)

Well, I would say most of those are physiographic terms. "Pacific Cordillera", despite its geologic contexts, is however definitely not one single geologic entity, but a real amalgamation of many. I guess I don't really understand your problem - is it a question of an article like "Hudson Bay Lowlands" belonging to the category Geology or not? In that particular case, based on the current content of the stub, I would say no. But that is not to say that someone who knows about the geology that underpins the lowlands (and probably contributes to their physiographic character) might not add such info, and the article would then be categorizable as Geology as well. Within geology, geomorphology is the study of landforms, and that term has largely subsumed the term 'physiography' in many usages, though 'physiography' is still often taken to be the descriptive element of such study, and 'geomorphology' as the more interpretive element. Physical geography focuses on the description and origin of landforms, and as such is sometimes taken to be a combination of physiography and geomorphology (and sometimes including soil science). I assume this still does not really solve your question - can you re-state or elucidate further? Cheers Geologyguy 04:25, 31 May 2007 (UTC)
Somewhat along these lines, I have created an article at Physiographic regions of the world along with three new categories, tl:Physiographic divisions, tl:Physiographic provinces and tl:Physiographic sections. Any help anybody wants to offer is appreciated, and if anybody has ideas on how to improve it or the process, those are just as welcome. Thanks. wbfergus Talk 18:30, 31 December 2007 (UTC)

Help needed with problem user

Ethel Aardvark (talk · contribs) has been making some undesirable edits to Pleistocene megafauna and New World Pleistocene extinctions. They are quite badly written and contain OR. On Pleistocene megafauna, I attempted to incorporate all useful information from his addition and rewrite it. He then simply reverted me 3 times, and when I left an explanation on his talk after the 2nd, he ignored it and left a message at my talk incorrectly characterising my revert as 'removing huge chunks'. I haven't reverted him on the second article since I plan to merge it with the first, after allowing some time for discussion. The way, the truth, and the light 19:07, 31 May 2007 (UTC)

This matter still has not been resolved. There have now been 2 more reverts. The way, the truth, and the light 03:17, 2 June 2007 (UTC)
And still not. I can't tell if anyone's here now because of the contribs bug, but he's reverted once more. He's also now reverted me at Megafauna without even looking at my edits, and using a false edit summary. Someone needs to stop him. The way, the truth, and the light 01:04, 4 June 2007 (UTC)
And now 2 more. Would someone respond please? The way, the truth, and the light 02:41, 4 June 2007 (UTC)
He's now stopped, after being blocked. No help from any of you. The way, the truth, and the light 02:57, 6 June 2007 (UTC)
I was just having a look through all the stuff trying to work out what was going on and who was who, when I saw he'd been blocked. So I thought I'd wait and see if that fixed it. Eve 10:19, 6 June 2007 (UTC)

Possibly problematic images at Timetable of the Precambrian

There are two graphs at this article (used nowhere else), (2 images removed), uploaded by the same person as self-created (presumably true).

These graphs seem to be undesirable. They are confusing, I can't tell which line is supposed to correspond to what. Even after study, some of them are still mysterious. The writing is misleading, the titles refer to 'effects', which is not what's shown (at least in the second graph), and the side-legends are not helpful. Finally, the graphs may well be original research and not sourced. I will ask the images' creator after discussion here as to what to do.

The reason I thought so is that the second image purports to contain a curve of atmospheric nitrogen partial pressure. I have never seen such in the literature, even though I have looked. It is certainly an interesting question; the nitrogen in the Earth's atmosphere can't have remained constant throughout the Earth's history, even though most analyses assume it did. The way, the truth, and the light 03:17, 2 June 2007 (UTC)

Yes, those are confusing. Please move to the article's talk page or coment out. --mav 03:54, 2 June 2007 (UTC)
Agree with Mav; at least ask the author/uploader what is the basis for the information - it very much needs references, otherwise as you say it looks like OR. Cheers Geologyguy 04:28, 2 June 2007 (UTC)
However, I think that some graph of this would be desirable, just not these! I'll ask him about the sources. The way, the truth, and the light 05:54, 2 June 2007 (UTC)
Since none of you have suggested any change, and the creator has not replied, I'm removing the images. The way, the truth, and the light 02:57, 6 June 2007 (UTC)

User page for User:Keshe Theory nominated for deletion

The user page for User:Keshe Theory has been nominated for deletion. This is basically an article promoting a pseudoscientific theory on a user page. As an article, it would be deleted because it is not supported by reliable references. Since this seems to involve geology, as it makes claims about a third core within the Earth, I thought that this WikiProject would be interested. Please go comment at Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/User:Keshe Theory. Dr. Submillimeter 09:44, 5 June 2007 (UTC)

a bunch of things were prodded because of transwiki to wiktionary on June 3rd

Chasma, Dorsum, Flexus, Flumen, Fluctus, Linea, Macula (planetary geology), Mensa (geology), Rupes, Tholus. Personally, I feel they should be redirected somewhere... 132.205.44.134 22:36, 6 June 2007 (UTC)

Oceanography Project Proposal

Oceanography is an important subject requiring attention on Wikipedia. Many articles require cleaning up and expansion, and there are many missing articles. Some standardization would be helpful. Is there any interest in forming an Oceanography WikiProject? It would be an undertaking, so it's important that there be enough interest to maintain it, but it is something that should happen when possible. Looking to other WikiProjects for ideas and for illustrating the power of projects to improve areas is helpful, some related WikiProjects I'm involved in that have improved things greatly are Meteorology, Tropical cyclones, and Climate change. Evolauxia 06:41, 9 June 2007 (UTC)

The project is proposed at Wikipedia:WikiProject Council/Proposals#Oceanography. Evolauxia 06:41, 9 June 2007 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Geology of the Lassen volcanic area

I was going to put this through peer review first to allow for comments, but what the hell. Please add your suggestions for improvement directly to the FAC page. Better yet, be bold and edit away. :) --mav 01:55, 11 June 2007 (UTC)

collaboration of the week/month?

Anybody here interested in starting a collaboration of the week or even month? Would be a good way to get some A level and even GA and FA geology articles. We should focus our efforts on Top and High importance articles that need help. --mav 05:43, 11 June 2007 (UTC)

i think thats a great idea. Sushant gupta (talk · contribs) 06:26, 11 June 2007 (UTC)

Geology-stub subcats

I'm having another go at reducing the size of Category:Geology stubs; please see this proposal, and give your thoughts on it. Alai 02:16, 18 June 2007 (UTC)

Strong support - and also I would suggest splitting mineral-stub by breaking out a new rock-stub. Willing to help populate new stubs when created. Back when I created geology-stub in 2004 I didn't ask, just did it. Guess you gotta ask now :-) Vsmith 02:52, 18 June 2007 (UTC)
Not sure about breaking out rocks from minerals. On some level, it's all the same stuff and any drive to draw a line through the pile will result in a lot of hair-splitting over where the stub belongs which could be better applied to actually writing the damn article. BeeTea 11:55, 18 June 2007 (UTC)
Actually there are only a few monomineralic rocks that might be problematic, dolomite and flint are two examples. For the vast majority there would be no conflict. And with some 800 stubs in the cat, a split is overdue. Vsmith 12:30, 18 June 2007 (UTC)
Maybe not quite gotta, but it has been known for there to be... comments if it's not done quite right. :) (Basically like most things in Wikipedia, it's basically just grown enormously, to the point where the stub-sorting project has not only a centralised page for discussing stub templates and categories ahead of creation, but another where we kvetch about^W^Wdiscuss what to do with stub types that weren't proposed...) Alai 06:39, 30 June 2007 (UTC)
Support. Makes sense to me with the assumption that all these stubs will be under the roof of this project. Solarapex 03:15, 18 June 2007 (UTC)
Strong support. Some ideas: tectonic-stub for anything to do with plates, cratons, platforms, orogenies, rifts, faults, etc; some sort of geo-event-stub for specific events like "the great quake of blank" or "the eruption of year" or the Tsunami of a few years ago, where the human factor overwhelms the geological back-story because these were often very ordinary geological events which just happened to strike where humans happened to live; is there a crater-stub for impact craters on Earth? BeeTea 11:55, 18 June 2007 (UTC)

Another two proposed: petrology and geologic formations. Alai 06:33, 30 June 2007 (UTC)

I also didn't know you had to "propose" a stub categoryand ran afoul of a stub policeman. The Wikiproject:Soil was initially dominated by soil scientists (and bully for them), the stub they created was "soil science" which made sense. Now geotechnical engineers and, hopefully, geologists like myself are also contributing to the project and there is quite a bit of overlap between fields. But as we know, not everything soil is "soil science". I don't know what the politics are or how to "properly" propose a stub category and frankly don't have the time or inclination to duke it out to make it happen, but think it makes sensethat if there is a wikiproject named "soil" there should be a stub named "soil" which encompases more about the topic than just "soil science". Does anyone else feel like taking this on? I can imagine what the soil scientists would think if the stub for that entire topic was named "quaternary deposits" or "overburden".... Drillerguy 14:10, 29 September 2007 (UTC)

Cretaceous-Tertiary extinction event

We're currently improving this article, with the aim to eventually send it to FAC. Anything WikiProject Geology members can do to help, even just comments on the text, is greatly appreciated. Firsfron of Ronchester 17:00, 7 July 2007 (UTC)

Featured Article Review for Geology of the Bryce Canyon area

A Featured Article Review has been filed for the article Geology of the Bryce Canyon area, editers are invited to comment on the article at Wikipedia:Featured article review/Geology of the Bryce Canyon area. TomStar81 (Talk) 19:39, 9 July 2007 (UTC)


Geology of the Bryce Canyon area has been nominated for a featured article review. Articles are typically reviewed for two weeks. Please leave your comments and help us to return the article to featured quality. If concerns are not addressed during the review period, articles are moved onto the Featured Article Removal Candidates list for a further period, where editors may declare "Keep" or "Remove" the article from featured status. The instructions for the review process are here. Reviewers' concerns are here. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 20:15, 9 July 2007 (UTC)

Old Faithful Geyser

On the Old Faithful Geyser page, it states that Harry M. Woodward was the first person to discover a mathematical relationship between eruption times. I can't find a source for this and the main bio page doesn't have any sources either. Can any of you guys help me out? If there are no sources than perhaps this should be removed. --Hdt83 Chat 08:21, 21 July 2007 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Geological history of Earth

hi guys, i have nominated Geological history of Earth page for FAC. please leave your comments and kind suggestions. Sushant gupta 01:34, 25 July 2007 (UTC)

Nusée ardente

Is there really such a thing as a Nusée ardente in geology ? I couldn't find it on Google. Guroadrunner 04:47, 25 July 2007 (UTC)

I think not. The phrase is not in any of the three editions of the Glossary of Geology I have, and "nusée" is not a form of any French word in my Cassell's French dictionary. I think the article is a hoax and I will nominate it for deletion unless someone comes along with evidence supporting the phrase. Cheers Geologyguy 04:57, 25 July 2007 (UTC)
Nuee ardente is (literally) "glowing cloud", and is a term coined for the famous eruption that destroyed a port town in Martinique, early in the 20th C. The term may have fallen out of favor, but was certainly current when I took volcanology classes (mumble) years ago, and visited the site in question, whose name escapes me. Ah, Mt Pelee, and St. Pierre.
Ah, now I see the nusee part: typo for nuee. Anyway, we have nuee ardente as a redirect to pyroclastic flow, so the Nusee article should, indeed, be deleted -- see talk page there. Cheers, Pete Tillman 20:02, 30 July 2007 (UTC)
Glad to read the English terminology has changed, for I believe in adopting a foreign term if and only if there is no equivalent one in the English language: 'glowing cloud' seemed equivalent to 'nuée ardente', which is a small subset of 'pyroclastic flow' isn't it? - one that glows red in spots, boils the sea & sets wooden ships at sail ablaze (I had only read about Martinique). These 'glowing couds' appear very different than the 'pyroclastic flows' during the Mt St Helens eruption in the western USA. (I see that 'tephra' now has its spelling latinized to 'tefra', though I used the term 'tuff' for a glassy rock with shards visible in the microscope. Specimens of rhyolite tuffs were usually classified as formed by 'ash falls' or 'ash flows', depending upon their properties. This comment is to prepare one for my remarks on positivism and 'Intrusive/Extrusive and Volcanic/Plutonic' (now topic 29) below. Geologist (talk) 03:45, 15 December 2007 (UTC)

Request for advice on source

I have additional material on the geology of Inyangani mountain: "The dolerite sill and the sediments underlying it are probably part of the Umkondo Group" [1]. Would this be a reasonable source, or would it infringe "no original research", be classified as self-promotion etc? Non-one has mapped the place yet, so this is the only information available, apart from a (hard copy, unpublished) report held by the Zimbabwe Geological Survey.

  1. ^ Love, D. 2002. The geology of Nyangani Mountain: a preliminary report. University of Zimbabwe Earth Science Research Seminar Series, February 2002. [1]
The link does not work for me, but based on the source it would seem to be almost, but perhaps not quite, as "published" as a lot of things that are cited (I've seen refs that are links to research on professor's school web pages, which are certainly not "peer reviewed"). Are you D. Love? is that why you asked about Original Research and self-promotion? Would the unpublished report by the Zimbabwe Geological Survey be available in the equivalent of an open-file manner? Things certainly do not have to be accesible online to be citable. There's my two cents. Cheers Geologyguy 19:36, 30 July 2007 (UTC)
The link only works when the webserver hosting it has power, which is maybe 40 % of the time these days. I am indeed D Love. The report (by someone else) is an openfile report, just not accessible online.Babakathy 13:44, 31 July 2007 (UTC)
That sounds ok to me. I would just be careful of the WP:COI potential, if you are the one doing the research also. Maybe hightlight that fact on the talk page? It's not a huge deal, unless you are going to make some wide sweeping claims that are based only on your info. Have a great edititing day! --Rocksanddirt 14:56, 31 July 2007 (UTC)

MYA, mya or Ma

Input needed here. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 00:14, 2 August 2007 (UTC)

Middle Miocene disruption

Hi, could I have someone who is a bit more up in this area please look at this article. I am not sure how "established" it is. thanks. - SimonLyall 10:59, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

Help understanding articles

Hi, I have a couple articles that I cannot understand and I was hoping someone could make them more comprehensible. They are North China craton and Western Block (North China Craton). Thanks! --Ideogram 01:40, 10 August 2007 (UTC)

Invertebrate paleontology

The article Invertebrate paleontology may benefit from additional contributions. Thanks! -- Jreferee (Talk) 20:09, 20 August 2007 (UTC)

Intrusive/Extrusive and Volcanic/Plutonic

There seems to be an inconsistency between description and interpretation for these types of rocks on the wikipedia pages.

From my understanding, volcanic and plutonic are descriptive terms of the grain size of igneous rocks. Intrusive and extrusive are interpretations of the origin of the rock. For example, imagine a fine grained igneous layer between two sedimentary layers with high quartz and alkali feldspar. You could describe this rock as volcanic, as it is fine grained. You could describe it as rhyolite (or rhylitoid), due to the mineralogical composition. But you can't describe it as extrusive or intrusive. It could either be a sill (intrusive) or a flow deposit (extrusive).

My point being, I keep seeing statements on articles like "Rhyolite is an igneous, volcanic (extrusive) rock", which is incorrect. This inconsistency seems to span mutliple articles. Maybe a project could be made to fix this.

Afrotrance 06:48, 25 August 2007 (UTC)

You're right, strictly speaking - but most volcanic, fine-grained rocks are extrusive, and most plutonic, coarse-grained rocks are intrusive. (Although "volcanic" to me is indeed synonymous with eruptive and must be extrusive.) The intermediate things (shallow dikes and sills) are often called hypabyssal (sometimes subvolcanic), implying intermediate (but still shallow) or indeterminate depth. As a field interpretation, and in the absence of detailed analysis, most geologists would probably tell lay persons that rhyolite is indeed "an igneous, volcanic (extrusive) rock". A very precise speaker might insert the word "usually" in that sentence. I would not change this usage. That's my 2 cents (US) worth. Cheers Geologyguy 13:56, 25 August 2007 (UTC)
My views differ from everyones', which is why I only criticize. I'm not convinced one need be quite so vague when addressing a lay audience. This elementary question is fundamental and should perhaps be resolved, for it addresses a topic in the methodology of science. Though not active in geology, I still separate properties from objects from origins. Thus a rock has certain properties, including texture. Rhyolite's texture is microcrystalline (aphanitic) or glassy (vitreous); and granite's texture is visibly crystalline (phaneritic). The other terms characterize specimens, not rocks. Were specimens seen to explode into the sky, flow along the ground, or extrude slightly (bubble-free, usually), these specimens would all be volcanic; but only the last would have be extruded, proving it extrusive. Mapping connects observable or measurable properties that define rocks (rhyolites & granites), with observable or measurable properties that define stuctures (volcanos & plutons); and theory connects specimens of both with genetic processes (extrusive & intrusive, for example). I don't know whether such usage is common, but it clarifies the reasoning of geologists for me. Geologist (talk) 12:40, 13 December 2007 (UTC)
My contributions are only critiques of others, but I strongly feel the 'talk pages' have great potential to civilization. When a student of geology, I always attempted to make my terminology consistent with that used by chemists, physicists, and especially mathematicians, whose terms are consistent with formal logic & (when possible) everyday usage. I hoped that all scientific terminology could someday become somewhat consistent. (As an example, geologists who have developed 'ad hoc' techniques or objects from other sciences have often chosen names that conflict with the names used in those sciences.)
The rare rhyolite flow, and obsidian domes are well-termed 'extrusive' (like extensive basalt flows), but ash-flow tuffs were commonly called 'effusive'. This leads one to ask what similar term we should use for the falling of ash from the sky, forming ash-fall tuffs.
The Wikipedia could strive to evolve an exact, precise, and consistent nomenclature in its articles, something not attempted elsewhere. This could be done by inviting reviews (in Talk sections) from lexicographers & researchers in various disciplines. Meteorologists, for example, may already have a good term for the falling of precipitation. By unifying nomenclature, the Wikipedia could contribute to unifying science and help all scientists speak (something strongly frowned upon when I was at university: a sociological phenomenon which lay people who supported science are only now learning of). Geologist (talk) 04:27, 15 December 2007 (UTC)

allowing unconverted metric units in scientific articles

I'm seeking consensus at MOSNUM talk for a change in the wording to allow contributors, by consensus only, to use unconverted metrics in scientific articles. Your opinions are invited. Tony 15:18, 25 August 2007 (UTC)

Soil article

Hello, there is a discussion at Talk:Soil which is desiring additional participants. Thanks. – Basar (talk · contribs) 22:55, 20 September 2007 (UTC)

The soil article needs peer and expert input from a geological perspective. A section on soil formation told from a balanced geosciences perspective is needed in particular. -- Paleorthid (talk) 00:37, 26 November 2007 (UTC)
New soil formation section: WP:GEOLOGY participants invited to edit mercilessly. -- Paleorthid (talk) 01:05, 30 November 2007 (UTC)

Bowen's Reaction Series

Soil scientists are needed to look at "Bowen's Reaction Series". This is, IMO, a graphical proof of the founding theorem in modern petrology: the potential importance of peritectic chemical reactions in forming various igneous rocks from one magma. Bowen's presentation of it proved of the greatest importance in geology, and it has nothing to do with the weathering of minerals (as is claimed there). I believe soil scientists would find the claimed order of weathering presented in the article either non-existent or possibly opposite, thus encouraging the article's rewrite. Thanks! Geologist (talk) 05:26, 15 December 2007 (UTC)

Some highlights in petrology's history were the observation of active volcanos in Italy, interpreting ancient cones as those of volcanos in southern France, claiming basalt - the rock composing their flows - igneous, illustrating that two magmas could mix to form all the rocks of Iceland, explaining primal magmas as eutectic mixtures, and Bowen's illustrating that a single magma could form a series of mineral assemblages as it cooled, mineral assemblages which composed igneous rock long believed to be genetically related. This striking relation opened a new field of geology: chemical petrology, whose two principal tools are still exactly those used by Bowen to derive & explain his 'reaction series'. I suggest the article be 'bumped up' in importance. Geologist (talk) 05:26, 15 December 2007 (UTC)

X-ray crystallography

The article on X-ray crystallography is all over the place. It appears to be written by a number of editors who have read up on the topic for proteins, with random facts about fundamental x-ray crystallography thrown in. It is inaccurate, and lacks the understanding of the relationship between the wavelength of x-rays in the electromagnetic spectrum and the spacing of atoms in a crystal. The editors are aggressively owning the article, and I am unwilling to edit it without the appropriate in-line sources, as the entire article is so poorly organized and inaccurate. I would greatly appreciate if anyone with a geology background who has taken a course in x-ray crystallography could write an introductory section from scratch to what x-ray crystallography is. KP Botany 04:11, 24 September 2007 (UTC)

Owning the article? That's an unfair accusation. Has anyone removed any of your contributions? No, because you haven't edited the article except to add templates. Your contribution would be more than welcome. --Itub 07:53, 24 September 2007 (UTC)
The technique is also used in metalurgy. Please add what you know! Graeme Bartlett 12:48, 24 September 2007 (UTC)
Many articles in petrology horrify me, the authors have not ignored but dismissed the few, most egregious errors pointed to in the Talk section. I should hesitate to write or rewrite any article without discussion (for authors only benefit from peer review), even if I were currently active in research. Clearly, since the importance to physicists of the original discovery of X-ray diffraction by minerals, the importance of & interest in the technique has risen & subsided at different times in different branches of science. One might expect the principal article to present these, balanced by importance, then break off into more specialized presentations (links with more specialized titles).
However, no correction by me (forget suggestions) has interested any authors in correcting an article; and I'm not qualified to do so myself. However, I know this and wished to help improve articles in my field of expertise, not replace them. I had hoped others' experiences were not like mine. That an introductory section of any article (the most difficult section) could be written by someone who once had an undergraduate course in it is a frightening suggestion; but I am seeing articles, completely wrong, written by uncompromising hobbyists in geology. It must sadden all that more experts of the highest quality do not contribute. Editing is a very significant commitment (for I once wrote some Mineralogical Abstracts), and often experts have narrow fields of expertise. In any case, your post suggests some scientists are not cooperating. Commercial encyclopedias avoid this problem by committing some of the finest experts in advance. This strength limits that encyclopedia's breadth.
I'm devoting much time teaching my 4-year old granddaughter to compromise; if mature scientists still can't, some well-balanced scientists, perhaps retired members from the US's NAS, may need somehow to be drawn in to moderate or otherwise solve this problem. Bourbaki once asked that an entire mathematics book be rewritten (and not because of errors), and the author complied. If such experts' suggestions were treated here as many have been, I should understand their loss of interest. (The few authors I corrected did respond, but the responses were either false guesses, seemingly to shoo me away, or references to vague and clearly 'in apropos' statements in the literature.) 'Owning' an article appears a real problem. I wish I had a remedy to suggest. Geologist (talk) 06:54, 15 December 2007 (UTC)

State geological article requests

Wow. I honestly expected wikipedia to have full detailed articles on Geology by state e.g Geology of California or Geology of Utah. I'm not even from the States but I had fully expected a detailed article on each state. Some of the American geological articles are very poor or non existent see Basic geologic features of each state. PLease could your project aim to start these articles and develop them. All the best and thanks ♦ Sir Blofeld ♦ "Talk"? 13:02, 29 September 2007 (UTC)

Have you seen Geology_of_the_United_States_by_state? You'll see that "Geology of California" and most other states are categories. Granted that there are not necessarily summary articles for each state, but in many cases such articles would have to be very long to cover the diversity present. I'm not disagreeing that such summaries ought to be here, but it is a lot of work and pretty much demands an expert to summarize such a scope of time and geological events. Meanwhile, the category does have dozens of articles. Cheers Geologyguy 15:33, 29 September 2007 (UTC)
I understand that people think in terms of states, but I prefer to have articles by geologic feature, so that there would be one article on the Rocky Mountains, and not seven, e.g. Rocky Mts in Wyoming etc, one article on Basin and Range Province and not four or five. This is also true in the eastern U.S. where state boundaries are often slightly more related to topography, but still usually unrelated to the geology. I would expect a state geographical section, or article, to refer to the appropriate geological features which would then have there own articles. In the 1970s, I worked (at a low level job) on a project to justify (as in make correct) the boundary geology between New Mexico and Texas north of 34° N, because the maps issued by the respective state bureaus did not match up. It highlighted for me the inelegance of using political boundaries for geology. I would not like to have that type of problem repeated in the organization of information in the Wikipedia. --Bejnar 16:05, 29 September 2007 (UTC)
Strong agreement with Bejnar. Cheers Geologyguy 16:50, 29 September 2007 (UTC)

Possible error in the articles?

On the page, Gibbsite, it states that Diaspore is HAlO2, which is different than what Diaspore says on its page. Is this correct? Thanks, Marasama 19:55, 29 September 2007 (UTC) (CarpD)

In my copy of Deer, Howie & Zussman, An introduction to the rock-forming minerals, it states that Diaspore is alpha-AlO(OH) and Boehmite is gamma-AlO(OH) the difference being in the packing of the oxygens, hexagonal and cubic respectively. So the Gibbsite article appears to be in error. Mikenorton 20:12, 29 September 2007 (UTC)

Chicxulub Crater at FAC

Hey, just noting that the article Chicxulub Crater, under this project's umbrella, has been nominated at FAC. I'm kinda hoping people knowledgeable about such articles could provide their 2 cents. Here's the FAC page. David Fuchs (talk) 21:13, 3 October 2007 (UTC)

Central American Seaway

Hello. I created a stub article for the Central American Seaway. I am a marine biologist, not a geologist or a paleoceanographer at all, but I linked to it in the walrus article since its closure triggered divergence of the species, and was surprised to find that the article does not exist. Perhaps it does under a different name? If so, it should be removed. Otherwise, perhaps someone qualified can develop it. After all, it's closure was one of the more momentous oceonographic/evolutionary events in the last however many mya, no? Best, Eliezg 01:02, 4 October 2007 (UTC)

Portal:Earth sciences

massive changes have been done in the portal. if anyone would like to accompany me then do tell me timely. thanks, Sushant gupta 12:49, 6 October 2007 (UTC)


Oil shale

Oil shale is an Good Article candidate now. Your comments are most welcome.Beagel 10:48, 20 October 2007 (UTC)

Proposed deletion: Madagascar (software)

Madagascar (software) (via WP:PROD)

I thought this might be of interest to the participants in this WikiProject as it deals with geophysics.
--User:Ceyockey (talk to me) 15:38, 21 October 2007 (UTC)

Notice of List articles

Page(s) related to this project have been created and/or added to one of the Wikipedia:Contents subpages (not by me).

This note is to let you know, so that experts in the field can expand them and check them for accuracy, and so that they can be added to any watchlists/tasklists, and have any appropriate project banners added, etc. Thanks. --Quiddity 19:39, 5 November 2007 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Scientific peer review

This Scientific Peer Review project can hardly be called successful. While there have been a steady but small flow of articles submitted for review, the actual reviews have been either non-existent or in no real way different from those done through the standard Wikipedia:Peer review process. Some editors will recall that the project was started with an enthusiastic discussion about identifying expert reviewers through an elected board. Unfortunately as time went by, it became clear there was no consensus on whether we had a board, or on how it was to be set up or on what it was supposed to do. There was also a lack of consensus on what "sciences" we were covering, and on many other aspects. In the end we sort of lapsed into a minimal review process which has staggered on for about 18 months. I think it is time we decided what to do about the project. Unless people can come up with a new way forward and enthusiastically implement it, I think we have to declare that this project be no longer active in any sense and that editors should ask for review at WP:PR. I am posting this on the talk pages of the major Science WikiProjects. Please feel free to publicize it elsewhere. Please add you comments at Wikipedia talk:Scientific peer review#Is this inactive?. --Bduke 01:49, 13 November 2007 (UTC)

"Pridoli epoch" vs. "Přídolí epoch"

I don't doubt that Přídolí is the proper spelling in Czech of the place after which the Pridoli epoch is named. But can anyone provide a substantial reference for calling the "Pridoli epoch" the "Přídolí epoch" in English? There is plenty of evidence for "Pridoli epoch" in English, see, e.g. GeoWhen Database. Shouldn't changes in naming, such as the changing "Pridoli epoch" to "Přídolí epoch" as done by Verisimilus, be discussed first? --Bejnar (talk) 13:30, 20 November 2007 (UTC)

The USGS appears to use Pridoli. "Divisions of Geologic Time—Major Chronostratigraphic and Geochronologic Units" USGS, "Strategraphis Nomenclature and Description" Suggestions to Authors of the Reports of the United States Geological Survey --Bejnar (talk) 20:50, 6 December 2007 (UTC)
If there is no objection, I will change it back to "Pridoli epoch". So if there is objection please state it. --Bejnar (talk) 20:47, 6 December 2007 (UTC)
The most definitive chart available is probably Gradstein et al. 2004, it uses plain Pridoli. I support changing it back, we don't use the Russian alphabet for Moscovian. Mikenorton (talk) 22:39, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

Chicxulub FAC redux

Chicxulub Crater has been renom'd for WP:FAC. You can find the discussion here. David Fuchs (talk) 20:31, 23 November 2007 (UTC)

A few article merger proposals

Hi all. I figured this would be a good place to stop by and elicit some comments for three merger proposals I have on Cordillera Occidental, Andes, Cordillera Central, Andes, and Cordillera Oriental. Since the issues are all the same, the discussions are all located on the same talk page at Talk:Cordillera Oriental. They were all merged together, and I left a message on a user's talk page asking to please start using the new merged page instead (after a revert), and he went back the next day and reverted back all of the pages. Any comments or ideas pro or con would be welcomed. Thanks. wbfergus Talk 15:26, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

RFC on Cordillera

At RFC South America cordillera articles there is an RFC on whether the Oriental, Central and Occidental Cordillera should be discussed in three separate articles with those names, with subdivision by mountain range, or whether these articles should be done by nationality. See wbfergus's comment above. --Bejnar (talk) 20:41, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

Greenspun illustration project: requests now open

Dear Wikimedians,

This is a (belated) announcement that requests are now being taken for illustrations to be created for the Philip Greenspun illustration project (PGIP).

The aim of the project is to create and improve illustrations on Wikimedia projects. You can help by identifying which important articles or concepts are missing illustrations (diagrams) that could make them a lot easier to understand. Requests should be made on this page: Philip_Greenspun_illustration_project/Requests

If there's a topic area you know a lot about or are involved with as a Wikiproject, why not conduct a review to see which illustrations are missing and needed for that topic? Existing content can be checked by using Mayflower to search Wikimedia Commons, or use the Free Image Search Tool to quickly check for images of a given topic in other-language projects.

The community suggestions will be used to shape the final list, which will be finalised to 50 specific requests for Round 1, due to start in January. People will be able to make suggestions for the duration of the project, not just in the lead-up to Round 1.

thanks, pfctdayelise (talk) 13:11, 13 December 2007 (UTC) (Project coordinator)


"Mo-clay" in Fur Formation

We have a new stub on Fur Formation (Lower Eocene, Denmark). The article mentions "Mo-clay", which is currently a redlink (I suspect could use a redirect to an existing article.) The article could also use any additional contributions that anyone cares to add. -- Writtenonsand (talk) 15:19, 13 December 2007 (UTC)

Paleogeology

We need someone to work on the paleogeology article; I recently had to do a report on it and wikipedia barely helped, if at all. I had to resort to emailing a young professional in the field of paleogeology with only five recognized publications, of the name of 'Clay Garretson' (oh, Clay, if you're reading this, hi. ^_^). I see that the article is marked 'high-importance' on the assessment scale, but the talk page is devoid of any conversation, and the article was edited last June 21st, 2007, and was edited a grand total of 10 times, over the course of two years, yielding only a single paragraph, and a small one at that. I'd adapt information from my essay, but all of the material that could be adapted is 'original research.' I'd expect a stub marked high-importance to get much more attention than this. Someone, save this thing. Yadaman (talk) 21:19, 15 December 2007 (UTC)

It had been by impression that the study of the history and origins of the Earth (regional or Worldwide) was called 'geology', and all abstract fields & theories (such as plate tectonics) are created toward this end. The article might clarify the difference between geology and paleogeology, and (since I've never heard the word), reference its etymology. Geologist (talk) 01:59, 18 December 2007 (UTC)

Request for input re Science Super-Categories

There is a CFD discussion underway at Wikipedia:Categories_for_discussion/Log/2007_December_15#Category:Physical_sciences regarding the relationship between, and possible merging of, two Categories: Category:Physical sciences and Category:Natural sciences. Thus far the discussion has attracted very few comments and it has been relisted. Two editors suggested asking for input from this Project, but as far as I can see there was no follow-through on that -- until now. So please give this some thought, and then share your thoughts at the CFD linked above. Thanks! --Bduke (talk) 04:51, 15 December 2007 (UTC)

A bit of recognition

Arizona State Geologist's weblog says for 12-28-07 says, "Wikipedia recently started WikiProject Geology, "a collaboration area and group of editors dedicated to improving Wikipedia's coverage of geology."... If you look at geology topics in Wikipedia now, it's pretty incomplete and eclectic. While a number of scientists disparage Wikipedia for its reputation of errors and biases, it is still one of the main online resources, especially for students and others not familiar with geology. It behooves the geologic community to help make sure geology is well represented and accurate online." --Best for 2008, Pete Tillman (talk) 18:15, 31 December 2007 (UTC)


Believe It Or Maybe Not: Patagonia Molasses

List of fossil sites lists 'Patagonia Molasses (Argentina, Miocene). Obviously, weirder things than this are true, and there are 100 or so Google hits for this, but are they all clones of Wikipedia articles in various languages? Can anybody confirm or refute this? -- Writtenonsand (talk) 21:57, 24 January 2008 (UTC)

Found this on JSTOR (alas don't have access) "The Tehuelche or Patagonian Shingle-Formation. A Contribution to the Study of Its Origin Carl Caldenius Geografiska Annaler, Vol. 22, 1940 (1940), pp. 160-181 doi:10.2307/519981". DuncanHill (talk) 22:00, 24 January 2008 (UTC)
JSTOR link is [2]. I found it by googling patagonia molasses. DuncanHill (talk) 22:01, 24 January 2008 (UTC)
I know nothing about it, but it should probably be molasse rather than molasses; it would be a reference similar to those citing a formation. Cheers Geologyguy (talk) 22:02, 24 January 2008 (UTC)
And this from Science Direct [3] mentions mollases deposits in Patagonia. DuncanHill (talk) 22:06, 24 January 2008 (UTC)
Hehehe! I'm guessing you're right about the molasse, I imagine someone (possibly a non-native speaker?) didn't realise pluralising it would have unintended implications. Still, it gave me a few wonderful minutes of syrupy daydreaming...
Incidentally, the quote from the JSTOR article is on p18 of the full version, and the sentence reads: "The Pliocene landscape-topography was completely destroyed by the preceeding or contemporaneous denudation of the soft rock-ground, the loose sediments of which, tuffs, molasses, clays etc., were easily broken down and removed." Which supports the pluralisation theory. Eve (talk) 22:38, 24 January 2008 (UTC)
The Glossary of Geology does not list a plural, but inasmuch as molasse refers to a facies, a sequence, a formation, a package of rocks, to my mind the plural would only apply when you are talking about two such packages - thus the molasse of Patagonia and the molasse of Switzerland would together be referred to as molasses, but each alone is a molasse. My 2 cents (US) - Cheers Geologyguy (talk) 23:07, 24 January 2008 (UTC)
The original term molasse (french for very soft) or perhaps mollasse (french for flabby) was a swiss-french local term for a soft, unstable rock in the alpine foreland, coined in 1789, and was expanded later to its now common geological meaning. So the plural just means soft rocks, I think.--Jo (talk) 08:56, 25 January 2008 (UTC)

Reminder of the Philip Greenspun Illustration project

Hi. You may be familiar with the Philip Greenspun Illustration Project. $20,000 has been donated to pay for the creation of high quality diagrams for Wikipedia and its sister projects.

Requests are currently being taken at m:Philip Greenspun illustration project/Requests and input from members of this project would be very welcome. If you can think of any diagrams (not photos or maps) that would be useful then I encourage you to suggest them at this page. If there is any free content material that would assist in drawing the diagram then it would be great if you could list that, too.

If there are any related (or unrelated) WikiProjects you think might have some suggestions then please pass this request over. Thanks. --Cherry blossom tree 16:42, 29 January 2008 (UTC)

Athanasius Kircher FAR

Athanasius Kircher has been nominated for a featured article review. Articles are typically reviewed for two weeks. Please leave your comments and help us to return the article to featured quality. If concerns are not addressed during the review period, articles are moved onto the Featured Article Removal Candidates list for a further period, where editors may declare "Keep" or "Remove" the article from featured status. The instructions for the review process are here. Reviewers' concerns are here. Nishkid64 (talk) 05:24, 2 February 2008 (UTC)

Map Symbols???

I was wondering if the editor will ever have the appropriate map symbols for the Triassic (instead of Tr), Pennsylvanian, and the Cambrian? The uses of "C" for Cambrian is wrong and it's difficult to find an equivilent for the "P" w/an extra vertical line for Pennsylvanian.Jmpenzone (talk) 22:30, 4 February 2008 (UTC)

Too big for text, but there is this image: . Cheers Geologyguy (talk) 23:08, 4 February 2008 (UTC)

Meguma terrane

I've just added Meguma terrane but as I'm a computer scientist, not a geologist, it would appreciate it if someone took a quick look at it. Mangoe (talk) 04:07, 5 February 2008 (UTC)

Geology help

Hi as part of WikiProject Derbyshire i've been working away at Derbyshire. The thing is it needs a section on Geology and I am clueless on where to start. I'm sure there are lots of interesting geology based stuff in Derbyshire but i'm lost. If anyone would like to lend a hand to an article that needs quite a bit of work then it would be much appreciated. I'm not sure if this is inappropriate or the wrong place to do this but i thought i'd ask a geology question to geologist. Dommccas 18:35, 5 February 2008 (UTC)

Here's a geological map of Derbyshire, alas no further info. This you may find at The Peak District info-page, which has some outlines and further links to Derbyshire geology. If you have difficulties in assembling the info, help should be available here. HTH, Jo (talk) 19:27, 5 February 2008 (UTC)

Incorrect information

I am rather terrified by all mistakes and incorrect information that I noticed in Quaternary (stratigraphy and other subjects) pages. This is very embarrassing. I am afraid much has to be rewritten because only correcting mistakes will not be enough. The time is lacking for me to do this, I have only rewritten interglacial optimum and placed a few notes about this matter on a few talk pages. There has to be done a lot, lot of work to improve this before an acceptable level has been reached.--Tom Meijer (talk) 11:35, 21 February 2008 (UTC)

Hi Tom, thanks for your help on interglacial optimum. There is much to be done on the fields of geology, so every contribution is welcome. It would be nice if you'd provide some of the references the above article is severely lacking. A lot of information here is unreferenced, and should be. So keep working, and don't panick: there's no deadline. Jo (talk) 19:01, 21 February 2008 (UTC)
Hallo Jo, I can mostly be found on the Dutch Wikipedia where I contribute to Quaternary geology, palaeontology, and molluscs. Mainly about the Netherlands, but because the Netherlands has a lot of stratotypes this is relevant to other countries as well. I will try to do something here as well, but don't expect miracles. My English needs to be improved now and than, but I suppose that will not be a problem. I will try to find some references to the interglacial optimum page. Best wishes, --Tom Meijer (talk) 19:38, 21 February 2008 (UTC)

Geology of North America and associated navigation template

Folks, we recently moved Geology of the United States to Geology of North America. An editor, Neelix, seems very motivated to create a navigation template to link to the Geology articles of various states and regions. However, very few states have their own geology articles, and it seems to me that in most cases, it wouldn't make as much sense to have such an article, as to have one for the region (for instance, there are no Geology of Oregon or Geology of Washington articles; they redirect to Geology of the Pacific Northwest.)

Just thought you guys would want to know this discussion is taking place, and might have some good ideas about how to proceed. Please discuss at Talk:Geology of North America. Thanks! -Pete (talk) 20:21, 29 February 2008 (UTC)

Reference Desk question

Someone has asked on the Misc RefDesk (here) about a rock they found that has what looks like a heiroglyph on it. I am putting this here in the hope that someone here can give a good answer. I seem to remember that there is a word for a kind of rock that looks like it has writing on it, crypt-something or litterolith or something like that, and I thought it might be one of those. --Milkbreath (talk) 00:45, 1 March 2008 (UTC)

Mass Talk page tagging.

Hi there! I want to start mass tagging geology related article's talk pages so we can identify them. Any objections? CWii(Talk|Contribs) 21:55, 5 March 2008 (UTC)

You can add to the Geology project with

{{WikiProject Geology |class=start |importance=low |attention= |needs-infobox= |peer-review= |old-peer-review= }}

or whatever the class or importance should be. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 03:23, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

Good idea. You might consider getting SatyrBot to do much of it. That's exactly what that bot is good at doing. Aleta (Sing) 03:33, 6 March 2008 (UTC)
Graeme Bartlett, Yes I know 9.9 , Thats what this bot will do. I forgot to mention that this will be done by my bot. CWii(Talk|Contribs) 21:14, 6 March 2008 (UTC)
Ah, ok, I wasn't familiar with your bot. I thought you were thinking of doing it by hand. :) Aleta (Sing) 22:21, 6 March 2008 (UTC)
What algorithm are you planning to use to recognise articles that should be tagged? I sometimes find categories give an idea. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 00:15, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

(undent) Right now I have a list here. I made it by going through appropriate categories relating to geology. CWii(Talk|Contribs) 00:28, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

Some of the things on your list shouldn't be included: for example, Secular Order of Druids, Stonehenge_road_tunnel, Danish_Runic_Inscription_66, J._F._S._Stone, Devil's Arrows, Fjuckby, Züschen (megalithic tomb).
The majority of these are archaeological - perhaps they are included as a result of inappropriate categorisation of Category:Stonehenge and the like.
Less importantly, some (e.g. Rock (geology)) are already tagged with the project banner; I don't know if your bot takes this into account.
Finally, will the bot automatically assess articles marked with a stub template as a stub?
Looks like a good idea when these are ironed out. Verisimilus T 08:55, 7 March 2008 (UTC)
  • If there are any problems with the list, make the changes. I won't mind :) and I'm no rock expert :P
  • Yes the bot will recognize it.
  • And yes it will :)

Thanks for your input CWii(Talk|Contribs) 00:05, 8 March 2008 (UTC)

Or you can even just give me the categories you want. The list IS pretty long ;) CWii(Talk|Contribs) 00:07, 8 March 2008 (UTC)
Okay, the bot is cleared for trial. CWii(Talk|Contribs) 20:38, 8 March 2008 (UTC)
Your bot appears to have gone out of control and tagged the majority of articles on your list - including many of those included in the "unsuitable" categories I mentioned above. I have now amended your list a little, but some inappropriate articles remain. Perhaps you could revert those articles you have tagged that should not belong to the wikiproject? Also, some none-stub articles have been tagged as stubs. Verisimilus T 03:04, 9 March 2008 (UTC)
Out of control? No, that's what it is supposed to do. I understand that the list isn't good, so if you can give me a list of articles or appropriate categories I'll recompile that list for you. CWii(Talk|Contribs) 16:55, 9 March 2008 (UTC)
Sorry, I had assumed that you would wait until you fixed the problems with the list before you set your bot on them. I have removed the majority of bogus articles from it now; unfortunately I'm a bit too busy to do the rest. However, it should not require an expert to deduce whether or not an article is related to geology - I'm sure you could skim through and remove the remaining offenders yourself. It would probably be good etiquette to remove the tags from pages no longer on the amended list. Verisimilus T 17:55, 9 March 2008 (UTC)

FGS

Calling particularly anyone interested on UK geology: I've created a Category:Fellows of the Geological Society of London, which is now in need of populating. There are loads of articles on UK geologists but I'm currently lacking a good source. Pterre (talk) 23:15, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

Wikiproject recent changes log

Copying an idea from WikiProject Volcanoes, I've found it's possible to create a recent changes log of articles tagged by a particular wikiproject, to help project members watch for vandalism. How I *think* it works is by taking a page with every article in the project (in our case WP:WikiProject Geology/Assessment#Assessment_log, I think) linked, and listing the recent changes. Like, for example, this!. I think it would be worth adding to the project page, but someone else might want to check I've understood correctly what it's doing first. Eve (talk) 13:33, 9 April 2008 (UTC)

Yep, you've understood it correctly. Great idea! Verisimilus T 14:21, 9 April 2008 (UTC)
I've added it into the tasks section, but instead of using the assessment page I created a dedicated source page without the other extraneous links. I also added in links to the project pages and templates, so we can monitor them too. If anyone has ideas for other pages that need monitoring but aren't included in the assessment logs, feel free to add them. Eve (talk) 21:06, 10 April 2008 (UTC)
I've now fixed it so that ALL the logs are included, not just the ones from the last month or two. The source page will have to be manually updated every few months, since old logs are deleted from the quality log page after a few months. But it should be working properly now. If you spot an edit on your personal watchlist that should be showing up but isn't, please let me know! Eve (talk) 21:33, 12 April 2008 (UTC) Eve (talk) 21:33, 12 April 2008 (UTC)

Tibet

This article has a WP:WikiProject Geology tag but doesn't actually mention any geology at all. It takes up a great deal of the new and excellent Recent changes log. Are there any objections to removing the tag on this page? Mikenorton (talk) 21:31, 19 April 2008 (UTC)

Aspen Mountain (Wyoming)

I reviewed this article for GA status and placed it on hold for 7 days. There is much expansion that should be done in order to bring it to GA status, and I noticed the article is not tagged for this WikiProject. I am trying to assist the nominator with the article, hoping you folks would be able to help in writing about the geological aspects of this formation. Thank you. --Moni3 (talk) 13:25, 23 April 2008 (UTC)

I've added the tag for this project. Aleta Sing 13:31, 23 April 2008 (UTC)

Help in adding geological data to Hogenakkal falls

Hi all! We need a geology expert in adding info onto the above article. I have a few papers on them, but I am not an expert in the field. Assistance in this is very appreciated. Cheers Wiki San Roze †αLҝ 17:24, 25 April 2008 (UTC)

Well, I ain't an "expert", but I am creator of the project, as per here. Let me see the papers you've got and I'll see what I can do. But if anyone who knows more about this than I do wants to join in, feel free to do so. :) John Carter (talk) 17:28, 25 April 2008 (UTC)

Good article icon

A proposal to add a symbol identifying Good Articles in a similar manner to Featured ones is being discussed: see Wikipedia talk:Good articles#Proposal. Cheers! Wassupwestcoast (talk) 19:36, 26 April 2008 (UTC)

Everglades

Hello. I added the WP:GEOLOGY banner to the talk page of this article. I have absolutely no authority to write on the geology of the Everglades, other than the fact that no one else has yet added a section and the article is in very poor condition. It's rated B class, but it is barely that. I added the material in March. If there are geology experts here, I'd appreciate a look at what was added for accuracy and sense. Thank you. --Moni3 (talk) 21:46, 27 April 2008 (UTC)

Vancouver, British Columbia meet-up

Wikimedia Vancouver Meetup

Please come to an informal gathering of Vancouver Wikipedians, Monday, May 5 at 6:30 pm. It will be at Benny's Bagels, 2505 West Broadway. We'd love to see you there, and please invite others! Watch the Vancouver Meetup page for details.

This box: view • talk • edit

Cheers! Wassupwestcoast (talk) 15:34, 30 April 2008 (UTC)

Rhynie chert

I've just expanded the Rhynie chert from little more than a stub to something more worthy of its exceptional status. I wonder if anyone would be willing to take a look at it and bulk out the bits where I ran out of steam, and/or give it a quick copyedit and de-technicalisation? Comments are very welcome on its talk page!

Thanks, Smith609 Talk 17:29, 15 May 2008 (UTC)

Template for this project

Needs re-creating - in its current form it is stuffed - to have good project management (and project assessment) - you need a way to file all the category pages - either with class=cat, or class NA - and the importance is meant to drop out as a result (although the mining project has both tagged NA and it works) - if anyone here can do it - you need to grab the pick - and fix it (sorry I am no good at that part) and decide that for cats - class=cat or class=NA - and at that point also the importance drops out in that case - cheers - SatuSuro 01:13, 20 May 2008 (UTC)

If I've interpreted your post correctly, you mean that category pages should neither receive an assessment for importance or for class. It would be easy to make the template automatically detect whether it is placed on a category page, and to remove itself from the "unassessed (etc) articles" and "unknown class articles" categories - but I thought I'd best check that was what you meant first! Smith609 Talk 07:45, 20 May 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Featured portal candidates/Portal:Earth sciences

earth sciences portal has been put for featured portal candidacy. your comments and suggestion are most welcome. Sushant gupta (talk) 14:09, 26 May 2008 (UTC)

Cambrian explosion task force

Just a quick post to publicise a new task force working on the Cambrian explosion. This article has been making slow progress for about three years, and it would be lovely to improve not just the article itself, but Wikipedia's coverage of related areas in this important but neglected field! I'd be very grateful if you would consider helping out where you can!

Smith609 Talk 14:52, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

Mining needs editors digging in

While wondering what the depth of the deepest mine shaft is, I observed several awkwardnesses in the articles related to mining. The Geology to-do list was empty so I added a couple of articles. There already are several tags within the article on mining. Several articles can use expansion and combination (should retreat mining be separate from room and pillar?). Some recategorization could be done. And, yes, I found the deepest mine, because I already suspected it was a South African gold mine. -- SEWilco (talk) 19:08, 12 June 2008 (UTC)

New Template

I am not presently a member of WikiProject Geology, but I created a new template which may be of use in articles relevant to time periods. I submit for your approval the following:

Looking through the articles on geological history, I did not see any templates which covered all bases. The template includes chronologically-sorted inlinks to every period within every era from the Proterozoic Eon to present day. Thank you for your time and hope this helps. ~ S0CO(talk|contribs) 06:36, 13 June 2008 (UTC)

The way timescales are put in templates on the English wikipedia is not very consistent at the moment. Lists like this are not very helpful because they do not show the relations between different units of geochronology in a clear way. Another example of it is the "old style" template, see Eocene, where the units are all listed but in an unclear way. Take for example the German version, which is much clearer. It shows absolute ages as well as the order of the different ages/stages. There is now a new version of the timescale, as on Cenozoic. This allows only two sorts of units to be shown at the same time (for example only erathems and periods). For Earth history / paleontology this may work well, but for geochronologic purposes it is unclear. I would suggest to take over the German system for general use and make the timescales horizontal (instead of vertical) and use them for paleontological and Earth-historical purposes (lower in the articles). Woodwalker (talk) 09:44, 13 June 2008 (UTC)
I did not mean to say the proposed template is useless, I think using it underneath the articles will improve them. Woodwalker (talk) 09:51, 13 June 2008 (UTC)
Or see the template in use at, e.g., Ornatifilum. Smith609 Talk 18:19, 13 June 2008 (UTC)

Caja del Rio

Hi. Question re terminology. Northern New Mexico describes La Bajada as an escarpment, but I am not sure the term is appropriate. La Bajada is the rim of a plateau, Caja del Rio. The plateau is a volcanic field; the "escarpment" occurs where the field intersects a fault. Improvements appreciated! --Una Smith (talk) 01:13, 24 June 2008 (UTC)

WikiProject Palaeontology

Hi everyone,

A new WikiProject, Palaeontology has been set up, and aims to be the umbrella project uniting Dinos, pterosaurs and monsters from the deep, alongside all the other palaeo article out there that aren't under a strict wikiproject. It was only set up today, so support, opinions and/or criticism is needed. I have come around to this idea, as there are a large number of articles out there in dire need of work, and this would be an excellent way to bring in some collaborative editing. Cheers guys and dolls, Mark t young (talk) 15:33, 30 June 2008 (UTC)

Circular linking Problems

It's Elementary
Educate!

There is a systemic unclarity that I've struggled through coming into geology topics sideways via a periodization edit. I think my comment here is symptomatic within all the articles I've gone around in circles on these last SEVERAL HOURS trying to see if I could find the difference between a Age (geology) and Stage (geology). As an editor here of tens of thousands of edits doing just that in cross-article and cross-discipline edits, this is the first time I can recall not being able to get a clearer picture cross checking against related topics!!! I almost quit while ahead and hung this note for an expert. Note the large time difference, and I haven't left this damn keyboard, save to pee and caffienate with a coke!

As an engineer, with college kids of my own, I'm very well grounded in the sciences, and have read a bit from time to time on geology (though lack any formal courses), and it seems to me, you folks are missing the mission... making the articles understandable in reading to the lay person about every topic, and NOT depending upon a link... which may or may not keep an explanation that clarifies what you meant in the first place... the reader shouldn't have to do the connecting, that's our job.

Links should lead to greater depth of understanding, whilst your writings have got to at least get the clear gist across to others ungrounded in the field. Generally, that means more in line prose providing the meanings of a related term, not relying on links to same. (Yes, it's a balancing act, but good articles—and the ones on stratigraphy and chronostratigraphy I've been circulating through are all in need of greater length in any case— So COMMUNICATE!) Clarify Please do so as often as possible. // FrankB 20:40, 16 June 2008 (UTC)

You're right that the various articles about the time scale are not exactly models of clarity. However, part of the problem is that it's pretty unclear what the current terminology means to me as a professional geologist, even after looking through all the stuff put out by the International Comission on Stratigraphy. I still don't understand why we really need to have two parallel hierarchies - Erathem/Era, System/Period, Series/Epoch & Stage/Age, to me it's just a recipe for confusion, but our articles do accurately (if not always very clearly) reflect the current internationally agreed position as I understand it (in my case, not particularly well). Mikenorton (talk) 17:08, 30 June 2008 (UTC)
I'm not sure I understand this any better than you, but isn't the basic point that an age refers to a slice of time, whilst a stage refers to a slice of rock? Presumably the distinction reflects the reality that there is rarely a nice clean correspondence of slices from place to place as defined by lithology or palaeontology when compared with radiometric methods. Pterre (talk) 18:23, 30 June 2008 (UTC)
It's like Pterre says. It is the difference between chronostratigraphy (units of rock with a certain age) and geochronology (the age itself, a unit of time). The example in the article: "T-rex lived in the Cretaceous" refers to the geochronological unit (Cretaceous period); "T-rex was found in the Cretaceous" refers to the chronostratigraphic unit (Cretaceous system). In the same way they make a difference in names between "Upper Cretaceous series" (chronostratigraphy) and "Late Cretaceous epoch" (geochronology). Regards, Woodwalker (talk) 21:07, 1 July 2008 (UTC)
I do actually understand the differences beween periods of time and sequences of rock deposited during those periods. What I find difficult is the use of two terms, stage and age, for the shortest stratigraphic subdivision, which both have multiple meanings and usage within geology, nevermind elsewhere. Normally when referring to, for instance, the Tithonian, most geologists don't use either term, they say 'during the Tithonian', or 'a thick Tithonian sequence'. On the other hand it is perfectly normal to me to refer to 'rocks of Jurassic age' rather than use the term 'period'. The original point made by Fabartus was that our articles are not clear, and with that I agree. I was just trying to point out that the usage amongst geologists is not always clear either. Mikenorton (talk) 16:22, 2 July 2008 (UTC)
I'm sorry I misunderstood you and I agree. But I think that as an encyclopedia, we should be clearer than the (confusing) daily usage by geologists. Constructions like "Jurassic age" should then be avoided and/or changed to Jurassic period (or system). Woodwalker (talk) 18:44, 2 July 2008 (UTC)

Articles flagged for cleanup

Currently, 804 of the articles assigned to this project, or 17.2%, are flagged for cleanup of some sort. (Data as of 18 June 2008.) Are you interested in finding out more? I am offering to generate cleanup to-do lists on a project or work group level. See User:B. Wolterding/Cleanup listings for details. Subsribing is easy - just add a template to your project page. If you want to respond to this canned message, please do so at my user talk page. --B. Wolterding (talk) 17:33, 3 July 2008 (UTC)

Rename proposal for the lists of basic topics

This project's subject has a page in the set of Lists of basic topics.

See the proposal at the Village pump to change the names of all those pages.

The Transhumanist 10:02, 4 July 2008 (UTC)

Changes to the WP:1.0 assessment scheme

As you may have heard, we at the Wikipedia 1.0 Editorial Team recently made some changes to the assessment scale, including the addition of a new level. The new description is available at WP:ASSESS.

  • The new C-Class represents articles that are beyond the basic Start-Class, but which need additional references or cleanup to meet the standards for B-Class.
  • The criteria for B-Class have been tightened up with the addition of a rubric, and are now more in line with the stricter standards already used at some projects.
  • A-Class article reviews will now need more than one person, as described here.

Each WikiProject should already have a new C-Class category at Category:C-Class_articles. If your project elects not to use the new level, you can simply delete your WikiProject's C-Class category and clarify any amendments on your project's assessment/discussion pages. The bot is already finding and listing C-Class articles.

Please leave a message with us if you have any queries regarding the introduction of the revised scheme. This scheme should allow the team to start producing offline selections for your project and the wider community within the next year. Thanks for using the Wikipedia 1.0 scheme! For the 1.0 Editorial Team, §hepBot (Disable) 21:48, 4 July 2008 (UTC)

Oil shale geology

The Oil shale geology article is nominated for the GAN. Comments and improvements are most welcome. Thank you. Beagel (talk) 17:57, 11 July 2008 (UTC)

The Oil shale geology article was promoted as a good article. However, during GA review some suggestions for further improvement were made. Any assistance to handle these issues are most welcome. Beagel (talk) 11:37, 2 August 2008 (UTC)

Badlands vs malpaises

Badlands currently treats Malpaís as a synonym. However, usage suggests they are related but distinct landforms. Malpaises are volcaniclastic; badlands are sedimentary. What do geology textbooks say about these two concepts? --Una Smith (talk) 01:53, 2 August 2008 (UTC)

They're not really technical terms, and indeed mal pais = bad land en espanol. Western US usage is as you suggest, except malpais generally refers to rough, near-impassable lava flows, as at El Malpais National Monument. Cheers, Pete Tillman (talk) 02:42, 2 August 2008 (UTC)
Badlands interwiki links to es:Tierras baldias, not es:Malpais(es). --Una Smith (talk) 13:22, 2 August 2008 (UTC)
I'm guessing that's Castilian Spanish. Anywy, malpais is what the old Spanish exploreres & settlers in what is now th SW US called 'em. PS: I think the plural is also malpais (but my Spanish grmmar is weak at best). Cheers, Pete Tillman (talk) 17:10, 2 August 2008 (UTC)

Geology of the Zion and Kolob canyons area

Geology of the Zion and Kolob canyons area has been nominated for a featured article review. Articles are typically reviewed for two weeks. Please leave your comments and help us to return the article to featured quality. If concerns are not addressed during the review period, articles are moved onto the Featured Article Removal Candidates list for a further period, where editors may declare "Keep" or "Remove" the article from featured status. The instructions for the review process are here. Reviewers' concerns are here. Juliancolton Tropical Cyclone 15:08, 11 August 2008 (UTC)

Terraces

Nineteenth century geologists were quite taken with the "terraces" of an area in northeastern Vermont. See http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~vermont/GazetteerCaledoniaEssex02.html and http://books.google.com/books?id=1OUbAAAAMAAJ&pg=RA2-PA148&lpg=RA2-PA148&dq=geology+%22black+river%22+%22Orleans+county%22+vermont&source=web&ots=meDcyc-XFn&sig=7-euFkFpNOf_5bKCNbUMUBCE58o&hl=en&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=5&ct=result#PPA18-IA1,M1

These terraces were apparently left by the Laurentide glacier, but I don't understand their emphasis at all. Why do these old geologists ever care about terraces? The area today is mostly neglected by geologists today and therefore can't find anything more up-to-date.

I would appreciate your thoughts. Thanks. Student7 (talk) 00:06, 19 August 2008 (UTC)

Could someone please fix this page

[4] is seriously broken and I can't figure out why. Could someone who understands the table stuff look at it? Feldspaar (talk) 08:25, 22 August 2008 (UTC)

I've had a bit of a fiddle, and it is less of a dog's dinner than it was, but it's still a bit messy. DuncanHill (talk) 08:53, 22 August 2008 (UTC)

Deluge (prehistoric)

Can someone look at Deluge (prehistoric)? It's in dire need of improvement. 70.51.9.124 (talk) 07:35, 13 September 2008 (UTC)

Evolutionary history of life

I've rewritten Evolutionary history of life in an attempt to remedy the gaps in its coverage. I know it's mainly paleontology, but the early history of Earth is mainly geology. I'd be grateful if you guys could comment on any geological improvments needed. -- Philcha (talk) 18:31, 13 September 2008 (UTC)

Revised template

I have completed major revisions of this template, spanning all eons, eras, periods, and epochs identified by the ICS.

I was wondering if it would be appropriate to include this template in all pages it references, or if other pressing revisions were needed beforehand. »Jc-S0CO 23:34, 11 September 2008 (UTC)

But I'm wondering what problem you are seeking to address. The proterozoic periods now all display a timeline with links from the Cambrian onwards, in their infobox; longer periods also contain a scaled, clickable timeline with all the necessary periods contained. What gain do you envision by adding more template clutter at the bottom of the article?
If you do feel that this template is an essential improvement, a couple of small grumbles: first, it's upside down. Convention is to place the youngest period at the top. Secondly, a taskforce is working on merging sub-periods with their parent articles; some links, e.g. the Silurian sub-periods, are thus redundant and un-helpful. Martin ' 00:19, 12 September 2008 (UTC)
I have implemented your suggestion about the order of the timeline, and will work to match the colors with their standards. But as I see it, this template would be an improvement over those existing now since it consolidates all of the significant periods into a single template. In the current system, we have in these pages one template for the period and another for the containing era. This provides no quick way to jump, say, from the Permian to the Triassic: even though they are sequential, the Permian marks the end of the Paleozoic and is thus separated from the Mesozoic. The template I have created maintains this organization, but allows the user to jump to any one of these. Alterations can be made to accommodate the merging of articles if it is thought necessary, but the main point of the template is that it exactly incorporates the ICS chart (per the citation attached to it). Rather than adding to template clutter, it would eliminate it by moving all of these links to one place, eliminating the need for these other templates. »Jc-S0CO 04:12, 13 September 2008 (UTC)
Colourwise, you should use the {{period colour}} template, to maintain standards compliance – and save you matching the colours!
But – as for jumping from the Permian to Triassic – there are two links in the infobox already. Do we need more? If we do really need a banner at the bottom, why not have a left-to-right timeline, like that in Conodont? Martin ' 04:29, 13 September 2008 (UTC)
I have applied the period color templates, thanks for the suggestion. I just think it would be helpful to have all of these links consolidated into a single standardized template to eliminate the somewhat cumbersome dual-template system in place now. I think this design is useful as a complete overview, offering mobility as well as displaying year ranges, and as an added benefit it can be minimized to further reduce clutter. »Jc-S0CO 04:42, 13 September 2008 (UTC)
I agree that the current system is clumsy and ugly, and I think that it's important to work out the best way to replace it with the minimum of (1) screen space; (2) clicks for the user.
Surely a slimmed down version of {{geological periods}}, illustrated below, would take up far less space, require fewer clicks to use, be more obvious what it was, and be to scale, giving readers a sense of time? Granted, by this system users won't be able to get from Triassic straight to the Neoarchean, but is that really a link that is going to be needed that frequently? As most of the links to sub-periods are or will soon be redundant, your template when not minimied contains a lot of useless space!
Martin (Smith609 – Talk) 05:27, 13 September 2008 (UTC)

(Unindent) I can see the benefit of a template such as that. Perhaps it would be possible to replicate that template with the containing eras and overall year ranges placed in bars above the periods? A separate template in that spirit could be made for each eon, each containing a link to the left or right guiding the reader to the next eon. »S0CO(talk|contribs) 05:37, 13 September 2008 (UTC)

Like this? Martin (Smith609 – Talk) 14:46, 13 September 2008 (UTC)
Something similar, yes. I'll get to work on it. »S0CO(talk|contribs) 16:02, 18 September 2008 (UTC)

Section break: Separation of eons

Working off of your suggestions, I have created two new templates to be used separately in their respective articles:

Preceded by
the Proterozoic Eon 		Phanerozoic Eon
Paleozoic Era Mesozoic Era Cenozoic Era
Cambrian Ordovician Silurian Devonian Carboniferous Permian Triassic Jurassic Cretaceous Paleogene Neogene 4ry


{{Template:Proterozoic eon}}

This removes unnecessary clicking and clutter, while also providing quick intra-eon navigation and maintaining chronology. The Archean template could be made to match this format with one minor revision. Do you see anything here that you would change? »S0CO(talk|contribs) 05:25, 28 September 2008 (UTC)

This is a much nicer solution, great work. The one area I feel it could be improved is by having the size of the boxes related to the duration of the periods; at the moment, for instance, it makes it look like the quaternary is equivalent to the palaeogene, when it's actually orders of magnitude shorter. Martin (Smith609 – Talk) 12:34, 28 September 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia 0.7 articles have been selected for Geology

Wikipedia 0.7 is a collection of English Wikipedia articles due to be released on DVD, and available for free download, later this year. The Wikipedia:Version 1.0 Editorial Team has made an automated selection of articles for Version 0.7.

We would like to ask you to review the articles selected from this project. These were chosen from the articles with this project's talk page tag, based on the rated importance and quality. If there are any specific articles that should be removed, please let us know at Wikipedia talk:Version 0.7. You can also nominate additional articles for release, following the procedure at Wikipedia:Release Version Nominations.

A list of selected articles with cleanup tags, sorted by project, is available. The list is automatically updated each hour when it is loaded. Please try to fix any urgent problems in the selected articles. A team of copyeditors has agreed to help with copyediting requests, although you should try to fix simple issues on your own if possible.

We would also appreciate your help in identifying the version of each article that you think we should use, to help avoid vandalism or POV issues. These versions can be recorded at this project's subpage of User:SelectionBot/0.7. We are planning to release the selection for the holiday season, so we ask you to select the revisions before October 20. At that time, we will use an automatic process to identify which version of each article to release, if no version has been manually selected. Thanks! For the Wikipedia 1.0 Editorial team, SelectionBot 22:31, 15 September 2008 (UTC)

I've done a partial scan through selected articles by score as I suspect a lot of articles are getting through the net. After getting about 40% of the way through this huge list, I'm staggered by the number of sub-B-class articles on the list. User_talk:Philcha#v_0.7_hitlist lists those in the first 40% for which I think I have sufficient prior knowledge to knock out adequate content for a B-class article, so I'd only have to look up a few refs and then dash off a lead - and I assume some are virtually B-class, but have just not been reviewed.
To my surprise, there are a few Geology articles in my (incomplete) hit-list - e.g. Paleozoic, Mesozoic, Jurassic. I suggest the offer of free copyediting above is worth taking up if we target the weakest articles in the Geology list first. For the Paleozoic and Mesozoic periods and eras, I can handle the evolutionary developments if you guys handle the geology, chemistry, paleogeography and paleoclimatology - give me a call when contributions are needed.
PS, since you've never heard of me before, I've got Kimberella, Small shelly fauna and Opabinia to GA, have almost completed a re-write of Evolutionary history of life (on hold until v 0.7 dealt with), am discussing the final touches to Paleontology with a buddy, and have contributed to various other articles related to the history of life. -- Philcha (talk) 07:43, 22 September 2008 (UTC)

-- Philcha (talk) 19:45, 21 September 2008 (UTC)

The stratigraphy section on Wiki - part II

Hi all, since my last posts on stratigraphic articles and the (mis-)information they give (for example at Talk:Chalk Formation), I have been thinking. Last time I wrote you about the mess on Wikipedia with definitions (series, formations, ages, stages, epochs, systems, all is messed up). Whenever I see an error, I remove it. However, since most stratigraphic names are very local things, it is often difficult to find out what is exactly meant. With this post I hope to draw your attention again to this problem.

Lithostratigraphy is confused with paleontology

example 1: Maotianshan shales - first sentence: "the Maotianshan shales are a lagerstatte". Probably they are not; the lagerstatte would normally be the name of the place where the shales crop out and the fossils are found. The shales are some form of lithostratigraphic unit, but what their exact rank is, is not clear. In this form the definition is incomplete. What's more: the article has no stratigraphic context in it at all. Problem: I have no knowledge of the lithostratigraphy of China, so I don't know how to correct this. This is just an example, most of the lagerstatte-articles currently miss a stratigraphic-geologic context.
example 2: Tommotian age - beautiful article, very clear style and good information. However, when I look at the geologic timescale (not the one on wiki, let's take the most recent ICS chart) I see no Tommotian stage/age on it. That is of course, because the age is only locally recognized (in Siberia I think?). There are literally thousands of only locally used stage/age names, and recently I began to list all these names (that will never become a complete list I'm afraid). Of course many of those unofficial local stages deserve articles, yet in the introduction of these articles it should be mentioned that they are local things. Again, the stratigraphic-geologic context is missing in this article.

Lacking chronostratigraphic and geochronologic articles

I can read and understand German. That gives me the advantage to browse the German wiki and compare. I find their articles on geochronology way better then the ones here, for different reasons. Take this example: Induan; and compare it with the German article on the same age (even if you can't understand German, you can more or less make up what is there).

  1. The German text mentions which stage is below it, and which stage is on top of it. The English version does not.
  2. The German has a nice and clear table to show the chronologic context. The English has not.
  3. The German text mentions a couple of regional stages with which the Induan overlaps. The English text mentions only the name "Feixianguanian", and tells (erroneously) that this name is synonymous.
  4. The German article then has a section on the research history of the stage. It tells us the name and date of the first author and where the name comes form, the location of the old type locality, and the place of the GSSP. The English article has nothing on this.
  5. The German text continues to give the stratigraphic definitions for this stage: which index fossils are used world-wide, or which isotopic anomalies? In other German articles on stages, we can find magnetostratigraphic or other definitions as well. The English article doesn't give this rather essential information.
  6. The German text has a section with literature. This includes the publications in which the stratigraphic definitions and stage name where defined, but also the historic reference to the first author. The English has nothing like this.
  7. The German text has some excellent weblinks, the English one has some of these but not all.

The English text does however give an overview of dinosaur and conodont genera of the age, which totally lacks in the German text. However, if we were to list all species from a certain age in the article, the thing will basically become a very long list of genera. This is not just one example, if you take any stage article on the English Wikipedia and then try the German version, you have the same story. The ages of the Permian period even do not have their own articles on the English wikipedia yet.

Proposals

I have two proposals. First: let's only give the index fossils for a certain stage in the articles on stages, not all genera that are found. We can have a section on important evolutionary (and stratigraphic/geologic) events from the age, but the lists with species should go to the lithostratigraphic articles (articles on geologic formations) instead. That would be clearer, because a (lithostratigraphic) formation has its lateral boundaries, so we won't have species in the same list that were an ocean apart from each other. The articles on (chronostratigraphic) ages can however contain sections on facies and the regional deposits/formations from that age, so that in the end, all is connected by blue links.

Second proposal: let's make articles on stages clearer by copying our German friends. Are there more geologists here who understand German? We could translate the German information on the historic context and stratigraphic definitions to the English wiki. What we could also do, is copy their nice small chronologic diagrams that visualize the geologic timescale. They even have diagrams on regional timescales to compare them with the ICS timescale (see for example the template at this article about a stage used in the Paratethys domain). This task is really too big for me alone...

Kind regards, Woodwalker (talk) 10:32, 29 September 2008 (UTC)

Paleontology

I've revamped Paleontology. If we can get it up to at least B-class we should nominate it for Wikipedia v 0.7. -- Philcha (talk) 09:39, 4 October 2008 (UTC)

Isua greenstone belt needs rewrite badly—it's mostly copied verbatim from research papers!

Just a heads-up that I've tagged Isua greenstone belt as needing a rewrite. Most of the text consists of passages copied nearly verbatim from various research papers used as sources, with little thought for appropriateness or structure. I wonder if other geology articles created by the same user may share this problem, but I don't have the time to track them all down. --Colin Douglas Howell (talk) 01:21, 8 October 2008 (UTC)

Kaapvaal craton appears to have similar problems and was already tagged a year ago. --Colin Douglas Howell (talk) 01:55, 8 October 2008 (UTC)

Volcanism on Io Peer Review

The article, Volcanism on Io, is currently undergoing a peer review. Please take this opportunity to give the article a once over, submit a review, or Be Bold and help to improve the article. I hope to nominate the article for a Featured Article Candidacy in the next few days if all goes well. Thanks you, --Volcanopele (talk) 06:20, 8 October 2008 (UTC)

Volcanism on Io, has been submitted to Featured Article Candidacy. Please look over the article, and submit a comment or vote. Thank you, Volcanopele (talk) 05:22, 12 October 2008 (UTC)

Tepui needs attention

Tepui is very interesting, but there are a few questions on the talk page that could be addressed. E.g., How old are these things anyway?
(Please edit at the article or its Talk - not just here.) -- 201.53.7.16 (talk) 21:58, 9 October 2008 (UTC)

FAC

North Sea

Hi, I'm GA-reviewing North Sea. Can you point me to any good sources on the development of the North Sea as a body of water (i.e. paleogeography rather than hard-core geology), both before and after Pangea? Maps would also be very helpful. --Philcha (talk) 14:48, 9 November 2008 (UTC)

The best source I can suggest is the Millennium Atlas of the Petroleum geology of the central and northern North Sea, if you can get hold of a copy. If you happen to know someone in the PESGB (Petroleum Exploration Society of Great Britain), I think that we all received a digital copy, sadly I've mislaid mine. It covers every period since the Devonian. I'll see if I can come up with any alternatives. Good luck! Mikenorton (talk) 18:07, 9 November 2008 (UTC)
Note: as a body of water, the North Sea is a fairly recent structure (southern part is only ~10.000 years old). The geologic basin in the subsurface of the North Sea was mainly active during the Triassic and Jurassic. Woodwalker (talk) 13:22, 13 November 2008 (UTC)
New article started as per above request ... North Sea Geological History, then the lead from article or a summary of the article can be added to the article North Sea Should it be added to the Template talk:Geology of Europe? Should it be renamed Geology of the North Sea? Please feel welcome to assist in its construction by editing it as well. Kind Regards SriMesh | talk 16:48, 23 November 2008 (UTC)
I'm afraid the whole set-up of that template and article names used in it are not very handy. National borders are not a very good criterion for structuring information on regional geology. Physical features on the Earth's surface like mountain chains, sedimentary basins, plateau's, continental shelfs, etc are (almost) not related to where people made the borders of their countries. Large countries may have too many features to describe together, small countries are geologically simply part of a much larger feature. For an island like Britain this is not such a big problem, but take Norway and Sweden for example, where geological features are found on both sides of a very long border. Having one article on the geology of Scandinavia would make way more sense. So if it would be up to me, I would not use the current template at all. Woodwalker (talk) 21:23, 23 November 2008 (UTC)
I agree wholeheartedly with Woodwalker that national borders are not a very good criterion for structuring information on regional geology. Not only do the boundaries disrupt discussions of geologic features, but "patriotic" editors make fools of themselves and disrupt the articles. Don't use the template, if possible. --Bejnar (talk) 02:18, 29 November 2008 (UTC)

Quaternary stage names

I am not a regular visitor and therefore I noticed only now the use of incorrect names for glacial and interglacial stages in this wiki. Glacials and interglacials may be considered as stages, however, the term 'stage' (as well as 'glacial' or 'interglacial'!) is not part of the name. So, I noticed this for Eemian Stage, and Cromerian Stage, both showing incorrect use of stage names. The correct names are 'Eemian' and 'Cromerian'. Besides this, I noticed that hardly any difference is made between local stage names (Ipswichian) and names that have been assigned as the name for the stratigraphical column (Eemian in this case). This difference should be explained (I may have overlooked such an explanation).--Tom Meijer (talk) 11:12, 13 November 2008 (UTC)

Hi Tom, I mentioned this already, together with a lot of similar problems (see here - nobody reacted). It seems to me there are no experts on stratigraphy active on the English Wikipedia. The users that contribute in the field do so mostly from paleontologic or structural viewpoints and therefore the use of stratigraphic names here is often erroneous. The only way to do something about it seems to be: "be bold" and change it yourself! Please adjust the errors whenever you find them. Regards, Woodwalker (talk) 13:06, 13 November 2008 (UTC)

Geology of Europe template

Responding to Woodwalker's comments above under the North Sea topic, I have started a discussion on the Template talk:Geology of Europe page, about how a regional geological template ought to look. --Bejnar (talk) 03:07, 29 November 2008 (UTC)


Archean Shield / Archaean Shield

I'm not a geologist so this may seem like a stupid question, but what is the Archean Shield? I've seen it mentioned in several books and websites but we don't seem to have an article. If its what I presume it to be, it'd be a fairly important ommission I guess. –Moondyne 03:04, 8 December 2008 (UTC)

See Shield (geology). I'll create Archean Shield as a redirect. Awickert (talk) 04:04, 8 December 2008 (UTC)
Forgot to say - an Archean shield would be a shield specifically formed during the Archean period. But it's not a common term - I very rarely hear it, and there are 934 google hits for it (and 1040 for Archaean shield - I'll just make another redirect) vs. 51,200 for "Precambrain shield" (which I hear rarely) and 369,000 for "Canadian Shield", as they are typically just referred to by their location. Awickert (talk) 04:15, 8 December 2008 (UTC)
Done, and added a sentence about Archean shields in the Shield (geology) article. Awickert (talk) 04:27, 8 December 2008 (UTC)
Thanks. –Moondyne 04:40, 8 December 2008 (UTC)
A shield is either Archean or Proterozoic, at least I never heard of Paleozoic shields yet. But is the extra sentence necessary? Compare it with explaining in the intro of trilobite that 'a Cambrian trilobite is a trilobite from the Cambrian period'. Or in the introduction of castle that 'a Medieval castle is a castle from the Middle Ages'. Woodwalker (talk) 23:28, 8 December 2008 (UTC)
I guess it's probably not necessary - I suppose that people looking up a shield should be able to know archean from proterozoic or click on the "precambrian" link. Removed. Awickert (talk) 23:47, 8 December 2008 (UTC)

Nevado del Ruiz

Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Hydrological geoengineering

Please comment on the talk page regarding above article's deletion process.SriMesh | talk 05:33, 2 January 2009 (UTC)

Tenham Meteorites (Australia, 1879)

Could somebody help with classifying this page, adding it to the right categories, adding the right infobox. Metzenberg (talk) 09:57, 2 January 2009 (UTC)

New stub proposal

Hi all - I've made a proposal for several new stub types related to regional geology - please feel free to comment at Wikipedia:WikiProject_Stub_sorting/Proposals/2009/January#Geology stubs - any input from this project would be appreciated. Grutness...wha? 00:15, 27 January 2009 (UTC)

Wikiproject Seamounts

I'm a member, but I think it should become a taskforce under WikiProject Geology (or some other close one).Can I please get a few opinions? 24.185.37.213 (talk) 23:53, 18 January 2009 (UTC) Moved to Volcanoes

Not all seamounts are volcanoes, nor is WikiProject Seamounts just about geology. Black Tusk (talk) 06:50, 30 January 2009 (UTC)

Mittelgebirge

I've gone slightly out on a limb (or a ledge!) creating an article called Mittelgebirge. I realize the word is German; I'm not aware of any English-language equivalent. The German Wikipedia and several others have rather extensive articles on the topic, so it would seem to be a valid topic and could be extended to a longer article. But is there a better name for this in English?

This came up because I'm trying to translate at least part of List of nature parks in Germany (not really a "list" article, despite its name: it has a paragraph on each of the 98 parks). I'm running into a lot of geological terms I'm having some difficulty with. Anyone with geological knowledge and even a moderate knowledge of German might be very helpful there. - Jmabel | Talk 06:10, 29 January 2009 (UTC)

I probably know <100 words of German, but in English, many geological terms have Latin roots, and some have German roots... so I'd be willing to give it a shot. At the very worst, I could probably get a German-language definition and Google translate it to figure it out. Awickert (talk) 06:49, 29 January 2009 (UTC)
I think I'll give you a hand. Afterwards you can correct my English :). Cheers, --Jo (talk) 21:09, 29 January 2009 (UTC)

Milestone Announcements

Announcements
  • All WikiProjects are invited to have their "milestone-reached" announcements automatically placed onto Wikipedia's announcements page.
  • Milestones could include the number of FAs, GAs or articles covered by the project.
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Click here for more information or to sign your project up.

I thought this WikiProject might be interested. Ping me with any specific queries or leave them on the page linked to above. Thanks! - Jarry1250 (t, c) 21:52, 1 February 2009 (UTC)

Basement

Is there much of an overlap between the articles Basement rock and Basement (geology)? – The Parting Glass 10:57, 6 February 2009 (UTC)

Looks like both pages are talking about essentially the same thing. I would suggest a merge into 'Basement (geology)', as this matches other similar page titles e.g. Crust (geology). Mikenorton (talk) 11:09, 6 February 2009 (UTC)
Right, the merge has been formally proposed. A week seems a reasonable time frame to allow for possible objections before going ahead. – The Parting Glass 15:48, 7 February 2009 (UTC)
The terms are usually used a bit differently, but the basement (geology) article is not precisely how I would use that term and appears to be the same as the basement rock article. I can't see merging would hurt anything, since it's essentially one article as it is done.

Berkeley Geochronology Center

Would a geology editor, amateur or professional, please edit my turgid prose in the Berkeley Geochronology Center article? Thanks. --KP Botany (talk) 01:01, 8 February 2009 (UTC)

Macula (planetary geology)

Macula (planetary geology) has been nominated for deletion at WP:AFD 76.66.196.229 (talk) 07:56, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

Olympic-Wallowa Lineament

Hi folks. I ran across this today: Olympic-Wallowa Lineament. Interesting, but definitely needs some expert attention. Thanks! Katr67 (talk) 02:18, 20 February 2009 (UTC)

Wow - it looks like a pedantic mush that spends a long time discussing itself and often seems to be more philosophical than geological. There are probably many grains of goodness in there, but I'm not inclined to poke around as I don't have enough hours or expertise to clean it up. Awickert (talk) 02:44, 20 February 2009 (UTC)
I've made a start but it's still a huge mess - which is a shame because somebody has obviously put a lot of time into writing it! Hopefully there are enough grains of explanation in there now for others to weed out the rest of the material that is bogus (yet attributed to surprisingly recent sources...) Martin (Smith609 – Talk) 05:24, 20 February 2009 (UTC)
I know - that's what left me so shocked - it is a very well-researched philosphical discussion with elements of geology woven into it. Good luck with it. Awickert (talk) 07:07, 20 February 2009 (UTC)

Seismic to Simulation

Could someone please review Seismic to Simulation. I cannot decide whether it is original research, a fork of other articles or a sound new article on a rather unencyclopedic title. — RHaworth (Talk | contribs) 00:17, 13 February 2009 (UTC)

Replied on the article's talk page. Mikenorton (talk) 12:58, 20 February 2009 (UTC)

Coordinators' working group

Hi! I'd like to draw your attention to the new WikiProject coordinators' working group, an effort to bring both official and unofficial WikiProject coordinators together so that the projects can more easily develop consensus and collaborate. This group has been created after discussion regarding possible changes to the A-Class review system, and that may be one of the first things discussed by interested coordinators.

All designated project coordinators are invited to join this working group. If your project hasn't formally designated any editors as coordinators, but you are someone who regularly deals with coordination tasks in the project, please feel free to join as well. — Delievered by §hepBot (Disable) on behalf of the WikiProject coordinators' working group at 05:30, 28 February 2009 (UTC)

FAC

I have nominated Nevado del Ruiz for FA. Those interested can comment here. Ceranthor 17:58, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

Bio-energy with carbon storage and Bio-energy with carbon capture and storage

There is a proposal to merge Bio-energy with carbon storage and Bio-energy with carbon capture and storage to Geoengineering. You could discuss it here. Beagel (talk) 18:04, 4 March 2009 (UTC)

Missing images

Hello, I would like to ask you, if you are missing any images from mineralogy or potentially geology itself? We can help you. If you need them, please list below images missing, with some characteristics please. Potentially some cross sections might be done.--Juan de Vojníkov (talk) 18:07, 25 February 2009 (UTC)

Nothing? OK, I will try to find it out.--Juan de Vojníkov (talk) 08:35, 7 March 2009 (UTC)
Sorry - I completely missed your generous offer. Phase diagrams for some mineral groups could be useful; many beautiful vectorized ones exist in Italian and need only be translated. (I tried for plag, but my computer froze, and I barely escaped with a rasterized screenshot of my hard work.) I've also thought that a better rock cycle diagram than the free ones avaailable would be good. If you're willing to work on cross-sections, those would also be useful, especially generalized ones across areas that aren't covered by images from a national geological survey whose images are free. Those are the ones off of the top of my head. Awickert (talk) 08:50, 7 March 2009 (UTC)

Slave craton is in mosts parts a verbatim copy of http://gsc.nrcan.gc.ca/mindep/synth_prov/slave/index_e.php. The copyright policy of Natural Resources Canada on http://www.nrcan-rncan.gc.ca/com/notiavis-eng.php is not in agreement with GFDL, thus it's a Copyright violation, isn't it? --Jo (talk) 12:45, 28 February 2009 (UTC)

I guess so. Darn. No wonder it was a pretty good article! Awickert (talk) 08:54, 7 March 2009 (UTC)

Two similarly-named substances, or one substance with two names?

There's a problem with the articles on tuff and tufa, and out of which of these would have been carved the huge We Are Our Mountains monument outside Stepanakert. I've been discussing the issue with Meowy, as seen here; can anyone help? DS (talk) 16:38, 4 March 2009 (UTC)

From just looking at them in the picture, I'd say a welded tuff, but it's really hard to tell without actually being able to see the characteristics of the rock at least somewhat close-up. Awickert (talk) 08:53, 7 March 2009 (UTC)

Article alerts

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Message sent by User:Addbot to all active wiki projects per request, Comments on the message and bot are welcome here.

Thanks. — Headbomb {ταλκκοντριβς – WP Physics} 09:11, 15 March, 2009 (UTC)

This looks useful, so I'm going to sign us up. If anyone opposes, they may freely delete the template I place on the main page without hurting my feelings. Awickert (talk) 05:30, 23 March 2009 (UTC)

Expanding Earth RFC

Resolved
 – 3 contributors banned as master and socks. RFC closed. Awickert (talk) 20:42, 23 March 2009 (UTC)

There has recently been a debate on the inclusion of the Expanding Earth hypothesis in four articles, Talk:Expanding Earth, Talk:Ganymede (moon), Talk:Mantle (geology), and Talk:Subduction. I was advised to initiate a request for comment, which is at Talk:Expanding Earth#Request for Comment: Expanding Earth and Plate Tectonics. Any comments there would be appreciated - thanks. Awickert (talk) 05:18, 22 March 2009 (UTC)

Workgroup

I've opened a workgroup to get an FT for Hawaiian volcanism. In dire need of members! ResMar 14:41, 29 March 2009 (UTC)

I'll be on standby to help out with general volcanology/geomorphology/ignous petrology, but my knowledge of Hawaii is about zilch. I'll head over to your page and sign up. Awickert (talk) 05:47, 15 April 2009 (UTC)

Geology watchlist

I saw that some other WikiProjects have project-wide watchlists; would anyone be interested in this? If so, I'll figure out how to make one and do it. Awickert (talk) 05:44, 15 April 2009 (UTC)

Looks like lack of interest - won't do it. Awickert (talk) 04:21, 25 April 2009 (UTC)
Take a look at 4 days of Geology changes Graeme Bartlett (talk) 12:47, 27 April 2009 (UTC)
That link didn't work for me - what's wrong with the WP Geology Recent Changes page? Mikenorton (talk) 13:59, 27 April 2009 (UTC)
Huh - I tried for a while to find a page like that, but couldn't. OK - nevermind, sorry for the confusion. Awickert (talk) 16:32, 27 April 2009 (UTC)
Sorry I took so long to comment, I meant to do it when you first posted. The link to it is cunningly concealed on the project page in the 'Open tasks and guidelines' section (it took me long enough to find it just now and I knew it was there somewhere). Mikenorton (talk) 16:57, 27 April 2009 (UTC)
Wow. Maybe I'll move it to a more visible spot. Thanks again. Awickert (talk) 20:54, 27 April 2009 (UTC)
Yeah, I think it's such a useful tool (stops your watchlist getting ridiculously obese) and deserves greater prominence. Mikenorton (talk) 21:05, 27 April 2009 (UTC)
checkY done. Awickert (talk) 21:33, 27 April 2009 (UTC)

Strange controversy

At talk:List of scientists opposing the mainstream scientific assessment of global warming, user:KimDabelsteinPetersen is insisting that the minute a person dies, he or she must be removed from this list, since dead people have no opinions. Michael Hardy (talk) 20:54, 21 May 2009 (UTC)

Nash–Sutcliffe model efficiency coefficient

Nash–Sutcliffe model efficiency coefficient is a nearly orphaned article. Can anyone add appropriate links to it from other articles and add it to any appropriate topics lists? Michael Hardy (talk) 16:24, 23 May 2009 (UTC)

Geological formation infobox?

I know about {{Infobox Rockunit}}, but I was looking for a more generic geological formation infobox that could be used in such articles as Hoodoo (geology). Would anyone be interested in creating one? ···日本穣? · Talk to Nihonjoe 22:31, 20 April 2009 (UTC)

What sort of thing are you interested in - geomorphic feature? Awickert (talk) 04:24, 25 April 2009 (UTC)
Something more generic which could be used for features such as the hoodoos, cold water geysers (such as Crystal Geyser), arches (such as Delicate Arch), etc., which aren't necessarily in only one location and which aren't already covered by another more specific infobox. I don't now all the technical words, but I think an infobox would be beneficial if it could be created in such a way as to be able to be used for these neglected geological features. ···日本穣? · Talk to Nihonjoe 05:36, 25 April 2009 (UTC)
I think "Geologic feature" sounds like a great name for it. First, we'd need to decide if it should be an infobox for the geologic feautres in general (hoodoo, arch, tafoni, geyser, lava tube) or for specific geographic occurrences. If the former, I'd suggest creating an infobox called at Template:Geologic feature. If the latter, we could add "geologic feature" as a category for the geobox, with a number of related fields. What were you thinking? Either way, I'd be happy to help. Awickert (talk) 19:49, 25 April 2009 (UTC)
Well, hot water geysers already use {{Infobox hot spring}}, so they wouldn't be covered here. Cold water geysers would be covered, however. I think {{Infobox geologic feature}} sounds good. It may be good to do some sort of survey of geology articles to find out which geologic features don't already have related infoboxes, and then create one which can be used for them. As I am not really familiar with this area, I'm not sure where to begin on that. Anyone have any ideas? ···日本穣? · Talk to Nihonjoe 06:47, 27 April 2009 (UTC)
OK - it sounds like you're thinking more the general features, then. I took a look, and {{Infobox geologic feature}} would be good. I've never created an infobox, though, so if you want me to do it, you'll probably have to wait a week or two until I have enough time. Awickert (talk) 16:36, 27 April 2009 (UTC)
Not a problem. ···日本穣? · Talk to Nihonjoe 17:32, 27 April 2009 (UTC)
All right - you'll hear from me in a while, then. Awickert (talk) 20:32, 27 April 2009 (UTC)
Just checking back with you on this as it's been about a month. No hurries, just looking to see where this might be on your schedule. :) ···日本穣? · Talk to Nihonjoe 22:29, 25 May 2009 (UTC)
Right, sorry, been busy and completely forgot about it. I will try to do it ASAP, ping me at my talk; I don't mind being bugged, just bad memory. Awickert (talk) 00:45, 26 May 2009 (UTC)
No problem. ···日本穣? · Talk to Nihonjoe 02:42, 26 May 2009 (UTC)

Geology of solar terrestrial planets GA Sweeps: On Hold

I have reviewed Geology of solar terrestrial planets for GA Sweeps to determine if it still qualifies as a Good Article. In reviewing the article I have found several issues, which I have detailed here. Since the article falls under the scope of this project, I figured you would be interested in contributing to further improve the article. Please comment there to help the article maintain its GA status. If you have any questions, let me know on my talk page and I'll get back to you as soon as I can. --Happy editing! Nehrams2020 (talk • contrib) 02:54, 30 May 2009 (UTC)

Alum shale

The alum shale article needs expert attention.Beagel (talk) 09:45, 30 May 2009 (UTC)

Seems the original author intended the article to be about the specific English geologic formation Alum Shale hence the capitalization and infobox. Your revisions make it about a general type of shale which is mined for uranium in Scandinavia, but retains the infobox and formation specific paleo info. So... do we need to lose the infobox and keep it as a general rock type article ... or make a dablink to the specific formation stub? Is the Scandinavian shale stratigraphically equivalent to the Alum Shale? Vsmith (talk) 14:03, 30 May 2009 (UTC)
The Alum Shale in Scandinavia is Upper Cambrian while that in England is Toarcian (Lower Jurassic), so not the same thing at all. There is probably need for a general article on 'alum shales' including these two specific examples (and any others) for now. With enough content they may eventually form their own articles but keep it all as one for now, rather than creating three separate stubs, IMO. Mikenorton (talk) 14:12, 30 May 2009 (UTC)
Keep them separate, they're really two separate things. The DAB link is the way to go. Abyssal (talk) 14:23, 30 May 2009 (UTC)

File:Bathymetry image of the Hawaiian archipelago.png is being reviewed for Featured Picture status at Wikipedia:Featured picture candidates/Hawaii Bathymetry. Any feedback would be appreciated, but be sure to familiarize yourself with the featured picture criteria before reviewing the photo. This image is featured in Hawaii hotspot, which is part of the scope of WikiProject Geology. --ErgoSum•talk•trib 21:17, 12 June 2009 (UTC)

GA Reassessment of Asteroid

I have done a GA Reassessment of the article, Asteroid as part of the GA Sweeps project. I have found that the article does not meet the current GA Criteria. As such I have held the article for a week pending fixes. My review can be found here. I am notifying all interested projects about this. If you have any questions please contact me on my talk page. H1nkles (talk) 22:11, 16 June 2009 (UTC)

GAR reassessment of History of the Earth

This review is part of Wikipedia:WikiProject Good articles/Project quality task force/Sweeps, a project devoted to re-reviewing Good Articles listed before August 26, 2007. History of the Earth has been reassessed, see discussion, and will be placed on hold until issues can be addressed. If an editor does not express interest in addressing these issues within seven days, the article will be delisted.--ErgoSum•talk•trib 17:55, 28 June 2009 (UTC)

please help me turn this stub into an article

Superficial Deposits I have inserted some non copyright info could somone help me?

Yes, I will when I get to it; bug me if it isn't soon enough. Awickert (talk) 08:05, 29 July 2009 (UTC)

Peak oil GA Sweeps: On Hold

I have reviewed Peak oil for GA Sweeps to determine if it still qualifies as a Good Article. In reviewing the article I have found several issues, which I have detailed here. Since the article falls under the scope of this project, I figured you would be interested in contributing to further improve the article. Please comment there to help the article maintain its GA status. If you have any questions, let me know on my talk page and I'll get back to you as soon as I can. --Happy editing! Nehrams2020 (talk • contrib) 01:55, 11 July 2009 (UTC)

Cryptospores

I have attempted to de-orphan the article Cryptospores by adding links to it from the pages Spores, Paleobotany, and Evolutionary history of plants. The page Fossils also links to Cryptospores. I would appreciate it if someone would review these edits and work them in a more appropriate manner if necessary. Thanks, --Sophitessa (talk) 06:03, 4 August 2009 (UTC)

Andrew long

FYI Andrew long Australian Geophysiscist is up for deletion at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Andrew long. Rock on. (pun intended)--kelapstick (talk) 20:38, 8 August 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for the notice, I will review. Awickert (talk) 01:57, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

Impact crater articles sorted, CFD for Cat:Astroblemes

I made a proposal to merge Category:Astroblemes into Category:Craters on Earth. See Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2009 August 16#Category:Astroblemes. The two categories Category:Craters on Earth and Category:Astroblemes had been used by different volunteers to construct nearly-disjoint sets of impact craters on Earth. Category:Craters on Earth was eventually clarified to be for only impact craters and structures, not volcanic or explosives origins. So that made the two categories effectively the same definition. Neither were complete. It's a lot closer to complete now with a reorg that sorted the members of each into mutual subcats Category:Earth Impact Database and Category:possible craters. I also went through the crater articles and added the {{Impact cratering on Earth}} navbox, and added confirmed craters to the navbox. Ikluft (talk) 23:59, 16 August 2009 (UTC)

I was under the impression that the Earth was not the only location in the universe to have impact craters... 76.66.192.144 (talk) 05:11, 17 August 2009 (UTC)
There is also a Category:Craters for that. Category:Astroblemes was very clearly being used just for impact structures and craters on Earth even before I began sorting articles between subcats for confirmed and possible. Ikluft (talk) 05:15, 17 August 2009 (UTC)

FYI - Category:Earth Impact Database fully populated

It looks like a number of volunteers have been adding articles for craters listed in the Earth Impact Database over the past 5 years. I've populated Category:Earth Impact Database with all the entries from that database. 176 total currently confirmed craters, minus one since the Clearwater Lakes article covers both Clearwater East and West craters, and plus two for the Earth Impact Database article and citation template. So that matches the total of 177 entries in the category. All the articles use Earth Impact Database as a citation via the {{Cite Earth Impact DB}} template, which automatically adds them to the category. I made sure all the articles listed in this category contain the {{Impact cratering on Earth}} navbox. I only had to create 2 articles (Dhala crater in India and Whitecourt crater in Canada) recently, plus one more article I created a year ago after visiting the newly-listed site (Santa Fe impact structure in the USA). But all of the articles got at least an edit to add the templates for a more organized presentation of the subject. Going forward, we need to keep this up as sites are added to the database. Ikluft (talk) 08:38, 20 August 2009 (UTC)

Opinions on renaming categories with "craters" to "impact craters"?

In the CFD to merge Cat:Astroblemes into Cat:Craters on Earth, it was suggested that "Cat:Craters on Earth" should itself be renamed "Cat:Impact craters on Earth". Earlier this year the definition had been settled (with instructions in the category text) as being just impact craters, that would be consistent with the purpose of the category. There's a big side effect of this - it's really renaming a whole tree of categories similarly "Cat:Craters..." to "Cat:Impact craters..." etc. I did a search and counted 76 categories would be involved as follows:

My take on this: Pro: clearer names, less confusion. Con: 76 of them. What do people think? Ikluft (talk) 14:09, 21 August 2009 (UTC)

Making the category name consistent with the criteria for membership is a good thing, and should be done. As to the number of cats, this shouldn't be a problem. Nominate them all as a group, if the renaming is agreed a bot does the physical work of actually moving the articles into the new cats. DuncanHill (talk) 14:17, 21 August 2009 (UTC)
OK, that seems to be the only word on it all day. I figured it wouldn't be controversial for that reason, at least with the geology interests. I'm also interested to hear what the astronomy interests think of "Cat:Craters on the Moon" turning to "Cat:Impact craters on the Moon", etc. (I CC'ed the notice on WT:AST pointing here.) But that's also acceptable discussion for the CFD for anyone who doesn't get a comment in before it starts. Ikluft (talk) 02:04, 22 August 2009 (UTC)
Certainly sounds good... hopefully the exocraters catalogued in the categories are all impact craters... as I think volcanic craters have been found on Venus, and definitely on Mars... 76.66.192.144 (talk) 06:59, 22 August 2009 (UTC)
With a cursory inspection, it looks like Category:Volcanoes of Mars and Category:Volcanoes of Venus have that covered. The category text can help clarify which one to use too. Ikluft (talk) 07:33, 22 August 2009 (UTC)

FYI - proposed renaming for Category:Craters hierarchy of 76 impact crater-related categories

FYI - see the CFR renaming discussion. Ikluft (talk) 09:33, 22 August 2009 (UTC)

 Done As you can see from the redlinked categories above, the renaming succeeded. Thank you to everyone who participated. Ikluft (talk) 23:03, 30 August 2009 (UTC)

Request third opinion

To prevent a potential edit war on the article Solid, I am asking the project members to vote here. Thank you. Materialscientist (talk) 01:26, 28 August 2009 (UTC)

CFR to add "on Earth" to Category:Impact craters by geologic time scale and Category:Impact craters by region

Two category renaming proposals were made which I think are completely unnecessary. One proposes to rename Category:Impact craters by geologic time scale to Category:Impact craters on Earth by geologic time scale. (See the CFR.) The other proposes to rename Category:Impact craters by region to Category:Impact craters on Earth by region. (See the CFR.) Both topics already imply that they're on Earth. There is no potential for subcategories about alternatives off Earth in either case. Please comment on the CFRs to prevent unnecessary lengthening of the category names. Ikluft (talk) 20:25, 18 September 2009 (UTC)

"Category:Impact craters on Earth by geologic time scale" & "Category:Impact craters on Earth by region" were emptied

Category:Impact craters on Earth by geologic time scale & Category:Impact craters on Earth by region were emptied, recently. This appears to be out of process since there's a message at WP:CFD saying that categories should not be emptied, but should be nominated for deletion before being emptied. The contents appear to have been dumped into the parent category, Category:Impact craters on Earth.

Do these category matter to you, or is it not a useful categorization? I will note that at a recent CfD discussion on the matter, no one voted to delete the categories in question.

76.66.197.30 (talk) 09:34, 1 October 2009 (UTC)

I see no reason to have such categories. If the age of an impact matters the category about that age is sufficient. If the region of the impact matters the category about that region is sufficient. Woodwalker (talk) 11:47, 1 October 2009 (UTC)
So does that mean that Category:Impact craters by country, Category:Impact craters of the Arctic, Category:Impact craters of Africa etc, and Category:Holocene impact craters etc, should be deleted (If I'm reading you right, it does)? Since they are the former inhabitants of the categories I mentioned in the lede. 76.66.197.30 (talk) 15:12, 1 October 2009 (UTC)
I don't think that is what he means. I believe that Woodwalker was speaking about the intermediate categories, not the final ones. The intermediate categories Category:Impact craters on Earth by geologic time scale & Category:Impact craters on Earth by region are only useful because they organize the others, and prevent the list of subcategories at Category:Impact craters on Earth from becoming confusing. Mixing regions and countries and geologic periods together alphabetically in the same list is seldom as useful as a hierarchical listing. --Bejnar (talk) 23:02, 1 October 2009 (UTC)

Mount Fuji Memorial Collaboration

As published in the most recent Signpost, Wikipedian Fg2 has passed away. As a memorial for him, a group of editors has chosen to collaborate on his beloved Mount Fuji article to improve it towards featured article status. The expertise of this project's members would be much welcome in the Geology section of that article. Please consider. Thanks. - Draeco (talk) 01:53, 14 October 2009 (UTC)

New stub type relevant to this project

Hi all - thought i'd give you the heads-up that a new stub type has been created relevant to this project: {{Palaeogeography-stub}} (with redirects from botht he US spelling and from palaeo-geo-stub). This is for historical/prehistoric geographical features and locations, e.g., Wealden Lake, Zealandia. Hope it is useful to you.

BTW, there seems to be a mismatch between the name of the parent article (Palaeogeography), and its category (Category:Paleogeography) which you might wish to discuss. The stub category has been made with a name to agree with the article - if this is incorrect, please propose it for renaming at WP:SFD.

Cheers, Grutness...wha? 00:58, 19 October 2009 (UTC)

resource for British Columbia geology

It occurred to me last night that, among others out there, for anyone doing Canadian geology articles regarding anything in British Columbia, and sometimes relating to adjoining states and territories/province, the MINFILE system from the BC Ministry of Energy, Mines and Petroleum Resources, documents geological research analysis connected with pretty much all of BC's landscape; anywhere there's mines or been mineral exploitation. Sometimes information attached to a mine may be useful for the entire region it's in, and most make mention of geological belts and terranes and more. Don't have a link handy, and there's different kinds of reports; the easiest thing to do is google "MINFILE [placename]" where placename=mountain, river, canyon etc as well as the name of a mine or a region, and whatever you're looking for is out there, often in considerable detail. There's a similar site, with bizarrely excellent, geology maps from the Yukon government also, can't remember exactly where they are, been years since I looked at them; they're frustrating because they have no contour information, only analysis of mineral belts. Anwway, hope that's useful; there's other geology resources there, probably a lot to do with the new gas fields in the Central Interior (or hoped-for gasfields) and prep for planned-but-political offshore drilling. All of BC's mountain ranges and mountains and plateaus, canyons likewise; there's no article yet on many terranes/landforms, and some like Fraser Delta/Fraser Lowland (too different items, the former part of the latter, which is part of the Georgia Depression, which is part of the Coastal Trough etc; link for a map showing all of these later....) once created could use solid geology in their content, as with other landforms (User:Black Tusk has done a lot of work on volcanoes. I'm impressed by the range of much content on US-side geographic/geologic articles; north of the border could use some attention; I just dno't have the time, and it's not really my field....Skookum1 (talk) 21:49, 19 October 2009 (UTC)

Yes. This is something that has been going on for some time. I have started some stubs about BC faults (e.g. Queen Charlotte Fault, Tintina Fault, Denali Fault) and terranes (e.g. Stikinia) since 2007 and I will continue to create more, but it would be nice if the lack of contributions on Canadian geology articles would end. Canadian geology is broader than US geology and there is lots to work on, including the formation of new articles. I have been contributing to Canadian volcanology and related geology/geography since 2006, but I have not seen too much improvments to them either except for my own of course. There is tons of geological information (50+ kilobytes) in my system about the Northern Cordilleran Volcanic Province with pics and maps that I am going to recreate the article with when I am done. Also, the Northern Cordilleran Volcanic Province is the most recently defined volcanic province in the Western Cordillera of North America. BT (talk) 23:18, 19 October 2009 (UTC)

Requested article: Josephinite

Hi there, I'd like to request an article on the interesting mineral josephinite. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.129.128.125 (talk) 22:24, 21 October 2009 (UTC)

According to Mindat it is a synonym of Awaruite. And we don't have that article either. Vsmith (talk) 02:05, 22 October 2009 (UTC)
There seems to be some doubt about that, at least in the paper I was glancing at (http://www.terrapub.co.jp/journals/GJ/pdf/1302/13020041.PDF), which leads off with: "Josephinite had been thought to be the same as the metallic nickel-iron mineral awaruite (KRISHNARAO,1962, 1964; RAMDOHR, 1950), but ..." (my emphasis). 86.133.245.63 (talk) 02:58, 22 October 2009 (UTC).

Requested Article: Sunda megathrust

This seems to be a valid term, and a very notable fault line, so I was surprised there was no article on it. I started to make a stub for it, but I generally avoid trying to deal with scientific articles as they just are not my forte. I did, however, find 11 reliable sources within just a few moments of searching that seem to support its validity. Would anyone be interested and willing to taking my very meager start and creating a full article on it? -- AnmaFinotera (talk · contribs) 08:06, 4 November 2009 (UTC)

OK, I'm prepared to have a go at that, it is one of the most seismogenic structures on earth after all. Article construction started at User:Mikenorton/Sandbox. Mikenorton (talk) 10:02, 4 November 2009 (UTC)
Awesome, thanks! Look forward to seeing it :) -- AnmaFinotera (talk · contribs) 23:54, 4 November 2009 (UTC)
It's out there now. Mikenorton (talk) 20:38, 5 November 2009 (UTC)


Way Up Structure vs. Geopetal

We are having a friendly debate over the use and meaning of way up structure vs. geopetal vs. any other term to determine the direction of younging in strata. Any input on this topic (the main part of the debate is here) would be appreciated. Apparently, some people use way up and only use geopetal for void-filled bubble, and others only use geopetal, and do not use way up. The more geologists to comment, so we can get to the bottom of this, the better! —Preceding unsigned comment added by Qfl247 (talk • contribs) 16:47, 7 November 2009 (UTC)

Requested article: FRGOK

I've put in a request for the article FRGOK: "Geologists have a category of rock called FRGOK, pronounced fergock, meaning, Funny Rock, God Only Knows, which is used enough to occasionally make it into their scholarly journals. (Would that all scientists were so humble.)" Anne Herbert, The Next Whole Earth Catalog. Quoted at http://davidlavery.net/Imaginative_Thinker/quotes/hquotes/humility.htm .
This looks like silly humor or hoax, but Ms Herbert doesn't normally do that. Is there anything to this? -- Writtenonsand (talk) 15:06, 7 November 2009 (UTC)

See our article on Fubarite, maybe it could be added to that stub. Mikenorton (talk) 15:21, 7 November 2009 (UTC)
(ec) Well, why not FRDK for "funny rock, don't know", or any number of other silly acronyms expressing ignorance or lack of reason to investigate further right now. How 'bout "leaverite" short for "that's a messed up sample, leave it right there, don't wanna think about it" (wow, that one already has an article!). Don't think we need any such articles. Vsmith (talk) 15:28, 7 November 2009 (UTC)
Maybe merge 'em all into Geological slang... Vsmith (talk) 15:32, 7 November 2009 (UTC)
I hope that I made clear that I'm interested in the term FRGOK just because I see that a source not otherwise AFAIK given to silly humor claimed that the term "occasionally makes into scholarly journals", and that I'm inquiring whether that's true or not. If this term is not semi-officially used by geologists, then of course we don't want to include it on Wikipedia.
If the term FRDK is used, then it might be worth having a mention of that somewhere on Wikipedia.
"Merging all" into Geological slang or some similar article would work fine for me. (I also see trashite mentioned in Leaverite.) Thanks. -- Writtenonsand (talk) 18:16, 8 November 2009 (UTC)

GeoWhen Database URL change

Hello Colleagues. The GeoWhen Database is now http://www.stratigraphy.org/bak/geowhen/index.html . I don't know how to change it in the box on the right showing resources. I'm sure someone here can do it! Thanks. Wilson44691 (talk) 18:38, 7 November 2009 (UTC)

 Done Mikenorton (talk) 23:22, 7 November 2009 (UTC)

Playa and a CfD discussion

There is a discussion to move Category:Salt pans. I think we need some expert help there. The problem goes back to what is the best name. Based on articles, everything seems to have been combined into playa saying that alkali flats, sabkhas, dry lakes and mud flats are all the same thing. If the surface is primarily salt then they are called salt pans, salt lakes or salt flats. However in past discussions it was stated that these are in fact not all the same. The category move discussion needs some help on this. I suspect that while playa is not assessed by this project, it probably needs some looking at with the possibility of renaming or splitting. So, it you can sort this out, please join the discussion linked above. Vegaswikian (talk) 09:12, 20 November 2009 (UTC)

A proposal has been made to move Playa (disambiguation) to Playa; discussion is here. --Una Smith (talk) 02:40, 6 December 2009 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Philip_R._Bjork

"Professor Philip R. Bjork is an American geologist and paleontologist. He was the director of the Museum of Geology at South Dakota School of Mines and Technology in Rapid City from 1975 to 2000. His academic focus was in Cretaceous dinosaurs, and mammals from the Cretaceous and early Cainozoic."

FYI. I didn't see that you had deletion sorting page, and couldn't figure out how to use the article sorting.... Ikip (talk) 19:34, 24 November 2009 (UTC)

Global Network for the Forecasting of Earthquakes

I am considering proposing this article for deletion. To quote my comment on the talk page,

"The references used in this article appear to be almost entirely self-published. I can find nothing in the peer-reviewed literature about GNFE. I'm wondering if this article should be on Wikipedia before there is some sort of independent view on the claimed effectiveness of the method. So far it seems to be just two scientists (Khalilov & Khain) pushing this idea. WOSCO, GNFE, SWB and IAS H&E all seem to be essentially the same group of people. My perception that this is all just self-promotion may be entirely wrong, but I think you need to include some sources (and not just a few news reports) that are not connected to this group of organisations."

Before I take the step of going to WP:AfD with this, I would appreciate other people's views on the article. Mikenorton (talk) 15:21, 3 December 2009 (UTC)

Global warming: proposal for discretionary sanctions

At Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Climate Change there is an ongoing discussion of a proposed measure to encourage administrators to enforce policy more strictly on articles related to climate change. I'm placing this notification here because global warming is a member of this WikiProject. It doesn't belong on the main WikiProject page because it's a user conduct matter and isn't really on topic there. --TS 13:29, 1 January 2010 (UTC)

Bystrite

Anyone knowledgeable able to clean this up? Casliber (talk · contribs) 03:52, 6 January 2010 (UTC)

Whacked it a bit... Vsmith (talk) 18:27, 15 January 2010 (UTC)

Also Chergach meteorite needs cleanup :) Casliber (talk · contribs) 03:59, 6 January 2010 (UTC)

Cirque

Are any of you guys watching the cirque article. I seem to remember that there are erosion cirques in Karst landscapes and Alpine cirques- I have left comments on the talk page there. Unusually it was an article I referred to for as a reader rather than one I had intended to edit. --ClemRutter (talk) 09:33, 12 January 2010 (UTC)

Ah, I am watching the article now. I don't know about karst landscapes... the term may apply (I'll check a geological dictionary), but I've only ever heard it used for overdeepened semi-circular glacial valleys. Awickert (talk) 15:20, 15 January 2010 (UTC)

Coal in South Africa

Any geology buffs around that can assist in expanding Coal in South Africa#Geology? Specifically how coal deposits were formed in the Karoo Supergroup and the physical properties of the coal today. --NJR_ZA (talk) 08:00, 15 January 2010 (UTC)

Manual alert - John Baird Simpson

John Baird Simpson has just appeared. Although non-encyclopedic in tone, poorly wikified and probably written by an editor with a COI, it may have potential if the subject meets notability guidlelines. I wasn't sure what these might be in geological circles. If so inspired, you will know what to do. Ben MacDui 14:04, 15 January 2010 (UTC)

Two of the USGS reports for the 2010 Haiti earthquake are dead. I'm not too familiar with the way the USGS archives their information and I'm hoping someone can assist in replacing the dead links shown here. Thanks in advance. --Moni3 (talk) 15:35, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

I've had problems with USGS links on some Antarctic geo-stubs I made. Althought the links were working when made, and I checked and re-checked them against the guidance on the USGS site for linking, they no longer work. i'll add that USGS is not an easy site to link to at the best of times, one has to juggle about the URL rather than using whatever appears in your browser's address bar. DuncanHill (talk) 16:00, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

WP 1.0 bot announcement

This message is being sent to each WikiProject that participates in the WP 1.0 assessment system. On Saturday, January 23, 2010, the WP 1.0 bot will be upgraded. Your project does not need to take any action, but the appearance of your project's summary table will change. The upgrade will make many new, optional features available to all WikiProjects. Additional information is available at the WP 1.0 project homepage. — Carl (CBM · talk) 03:21, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

Mountain formation

It would seem from the introductory definition of the article Orogeny: (Orogeny (Greek for "mountain generating") refers to natural mountain building) that this article has something to do with mountain formation. However, if so, this objective is entirely lost sight of in this article. In fact, this article gives the impression that mountain formation is irrelevant: "An orogen is different from a mountain range in that an orogen may be almost completely eroded away, and only recognizable by studying (old) rocks that bear traces of orogenesis."

All this is unfortunate as mountain formation is far more of general interest than suggested by orogeny, a technical term probably known to no-one but a specialist.

It would be nice if some article on Mountain formation could be mounted that might connect the many articles related to this topic of common interest. Brews ohare (talk) 19:39, 24 January 2010 (UTC)

I added a sentence to Orogeny to direct attention to the subject matter of orogenesis. I also created a redirect from Mountain formation to Orogeny. Unfortunately, this article is not satisfactory in this regard, but there seems to be no other. Brews ohare (talk) 19:54, 24 January 2010 (UTC)

I added a figure to illustrate mountain formation in the intro and moved the map to the later section on various specific locations. Brews ohare (talk) 20:22, 24 January 2010 (UTC)

Upon further rumination, I wrote a new article for Mountain formation linked to Orogeny. I also rewrote parts of Orogeny to divorce it somewhat from mountain building, as it appears to be a subject devoted to a somewhat different although related topic. Brews ohare (talk) 01:20, 25 January 2010 (UTC)

You are correct in that the orogeny article is/was likely a bit too technical, however orogeny is the process that builds mountains. Geologists are interested in ancient mountains formed by orogeny and eroded away as well as the currently forming and eroding mountains the general public thinks of. Your newly mounted article has promise as a general introduction to mountain formation, but it must be consistent with the more detailed technical article. The Himalayas and Andes are the mind-boggling expressions of the Himalayan and Andean orogenies which have been ongoing for millions of years and will continue for millions more. The perspective of deep time is critical to comprehending the slow orogenic processes resulting from plate tectonics. Vsmith (talk) 04:10, 25 January 2010 (UTC)
I'll defer to the experts here. I take it that the term orogeny in practice is not focused very specifically upon mountain building, although mountain building is part of things. Mainly it can be understood from its use in terms such as Cadomian Orogeny, Caledonian Orogeny, as referring to a series of events, an orogenic cycle or deformation episode, as related to particular collisions of particular plates (Laurentia, Baltica, and Amazonia, e.g.) in particular time periods. Mountain building is almost a peripheral or ancillary matter in this context, which appears to be aimed largely at providing theory and experimental support for the underlying causes of a wide variety of geological features. As only one possible example of such usage, see the caption to Figure 10 in Catcosinos. Brews ohare (talk) 06:58, 25 January 2010 (UTC)
The term 'orogeny' does refer to mountain building but as geologists we spend a lot of out time wandering around the heavily eroded remnants of mountain chains. You're right that it is seen as part of a cycle and includes e.g. in the Caledonian orogeny a series of arc continent collisions followed by the closure of the Iapetus ocean and the climactic continent-continent collision. The final part of the story in most orogens is that of 'extensional collapse', a fate that undoubtedly awaits the Himalayas eventually (OR warning), and should probably be added to this article. Mikenorton (talk) 19:30, 25 January 2010 (UTC)
I don't see the need for a separate article on orogeny and mountain building, since they seem to refer to the same concept. I suggest that we have a gentle non-technical introduction to orogeny, which would improve the article for general readers. —hike395 (talk) 03:50, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

"Orogeny" is a broad and ambitious topic, as seen in discussions of a particular orogeny, for example, this discussion of the Caledonian Orogeny. Although the origin of the term "orogeny" apparently is in the Greek for "mountain building", that meaning has become a bit archaic.

To illustrate modern usage, I'll provide a few quotes here, which you may wish to skip if it is all old hat. Roy & Skehan say: "in the contemporary literature the term orogeny is understood as a severe structural deformational event followed or accompanied by metamorphism and the intrusion of syntectonic to posttectonic granites...an orogeny is usually explained by the collisions of two continents or of an island arc with a continent. It is possible that the collision of a continent and a mid-ocean ridge may also result in an orogenic episode. ... a major plate-tectonic scenario may be of considerable complexity involving several types of deformational events..." Kent & Kent say: "The orogeny is then understood as a complex of events which affect, fairly frequently, the same orogen, but whose intensity and nature vary from one place to another." Sonesson says: The Svecokarelian Orogeny is frequently spoken of as a cycle. The concept of cyclicity implies that orogenies tend to take a certain course for which there is empirical evidence. A cycle runs from the early development of depositional troughs, often with much evidence of balsaltic magmatism, through a culminating phase of strong beating, great crustal deformation and intrusion of granites..."

The point I'd like to have examined here is that "orogeny" has expanded to include all the aspects of a "deformational event" and not just mountain building. It is not an accident that the article Orogeny begins with a map. Almost all (perhaps all) discussions of a particular orogeny, for example the Caledonian Orogeny, are full of maps showing plate locations and full of discussions supporting the model of whatever collisions are invoked to explain a wide variety of geological structures (not just mountains, or even primarily mountains). There is rarely, if ever, any actual discussion of mountain building as central to a discussion of orogeny.

Thus, it seems to me that mountain building should remain separate, not only because it is a topic of interest to the non-specialist more than to the expert, but also because it is merely a facet of orogeny, and not its main preoccupation, which is empirical support for plate-tectonic scenarios. Brews ohare (talk) 07:57, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

Main preoccupation, which is empirical support for plate-tectonic scenarios.? That seems a bit odd. An orogeny is the tectonic process by which mountains are built ... along with a bunch of other effects/results. The evidence in the rocks is now seen/used as support for plate tectonic theory by geologists. The term and concept predates plate tectonics by quite a while. The now outdated geeosynclinal theories were advanced to explain orogenies before plate tectonics gained much support. Vsmith (talk) 13:09, 26 January 2010 (UTC)
Yes I too think that they should be two separate articles, content may overlap, but details differ, and the level of audience as the target may also differ. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 12:32, 26 January 2010 (UTC)
I could go either way on this. Either a separate introductory article tied to the more detailed orogeny article or an intrductory section within the orogeny article. That said, I would prefer inclusion as a part of overall redo as the current article needs quite a bit of work and said introductory section would be part of article improvement. The article is not really long enough to require breaking out a separate section. Vsmith (talk) 13:09, 26 January 2010 (UTC)
If Orogeny is in for a massive overhaul, this merge topic could be shelved until it is seen what Orogeny actually looks like. If the article takes the broader view of Orogeny (per the definitions linked above), Mountain building will be only a facet, and it may become clear that it distracts from the Orogeny article. Brews ohare (talk) 15:37, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

At this point it is apparent that a merge is a bad idea because the modern view of orogeny makes it an accompaniment to mountain building in many cases, not a cause. This view is now documented in Orogeny. Brews ohare (talk) 17:48, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

I have to disagree, though I'm happy that you've been working on geology articles. Orogeny is the cause of all mountain building related to collisional events. In your previous posts, you note that orogonies are accompanied by deformation. That deformation is shortening and thickening of the crust, which leads to surface uplift. So they are actually genetically connected. If there's some more fundamental issue here that you're having with the connection between the two, I (and others) are happy to answer, Awickert (talk) 06:05, 4 February 2010 (UTC)
I just read your changes to orogeny. Two issues that I think we are running into is that the paper is talking about is that topographic highs can be produced in other ways, and that previous mountain belts have eroded away. I would strongly disagree with the phrase, "Today, most geologists regard the formation of mountainous topography as postorogenic," because it is silly to think that the topography pops up after the deformation is done. I'm not a reliable source though :-). One issue is that the book was written by someone who doesn't study structural geology. Awickert (talk) 06:18, 4 February 2010 (UTC)
I believe that the current articles, by drawing a strong distinction between orogeny and mountain building, do not reflect the majority opinion of geologists. The misgivings from the other editors (Awickert, Vsmith, Mikenorton) reflect this. We can have two separate articles, but we have to fix this. —hike395 (talk) 13:38, 4 February 2010 (UTC)
I would have to agree that the mountain building article should be merged with the orogeny article. Orogeny is the process of mountain building and there is no need to have two articles about the same thing. BT (talk) 15:06, 4 February 2010 (UTC)
After further consideration, I would support a move of the Mountain building article to Mountain formation (currently a redirect). To most geologists, 'mountain building' and 'orogeny' are synonymous. There is a place for an article that describes the various processes by which mountains are formed. 'Mountain formation' seems like the natural title and avoids the common scientific usage of 'mountain building'. Mikenorton (talk) 17:19, 4 February 2010 (UTC)
That sounds like a good idea, and a good place to put the formation of high topography due to hot spot volcanism, rifting (and associated dynamic topography), and restraining bends... and possibly some others as well. Awickert (talk) 17:29, 4 February 2010 (UTC)
I made this move. Brews ohare (talk) 23:50, 4 February 2010 (UTC)
I just undid the changes to Mountain building - if the move needs to be done it needs to be done properly, as per WP:MOVE. As the page exists already it needs an admin to do it, by e.g. listing at WP:RM. --JohnBlackburnewordsdeeds 23:57, 4 February 2010 (UTC)

The separation into two articles seems to me to be mostly agreed upon. Inclusion of the present Mountain building page with Orogeny looks to be a major distraction.

Although there is resistance expressed by BT and hike395 to making a distinction between orogenesis and mountain building, I'd appreciate a real attempt to deal with the contrary views extensively sourced in Orogeny. In particular, the verbatim statement of the separation in meaning by Cliff Ollier, C. F. Pain (2000). The Origin of Mountains. Routledge. p. 5. ISBN 0415198895. is supported in that work by extensive quotes from several authors. That is also the view of Ian Douglas, Richard John Huggett, Mike Robinson (2002). Companion Encyclopedia of Geography: The Environment and Humankind. Taylor & Francis. p. 33. ISBN 0415277507.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link). I'd say from looking at the discussions of specific named orogenies, that the connection to mountain building is simply a tag attached to the phenomena; a convenient identifier & association, but the identification with rock folding is more accurate. Brews ohare (talk) 22:20, 4 February 2010 (UTC)

Seems the "contrary views" you have added are from geomorphologists and geographers. It would be interesting to know the criteria used in finding those "contrary views". I would especially note that the Encyclopedia of Physical Geography (2002) still retains mention of the "expanding earth" hypothesis. Where are your references to studies/reviews from tectonics and structural geology?
Now as Awickert stated above, there are mountains formed in non-orogenic environments and those need a home. And that is the main arguement for a separate article on mountain formation which can cover those epeirogenic highlands. The major mountain ranges, the Himalaya, Andes, Alps... are still best explained by orogenies and should be so described. My view would include orogenic mountains discussions within the orogeny article. A mountain formation article would mention that and defer to the orogeny article while focusing more on the volcanic and other mountains which occur outside of orogenic zones (the hotspot, block faulting, rift associated etc.). In addition the rugged mountain topography which results from erosion of uplifted areas should be discussed. Vsmith (talk) 23:48, 4 February 2010 (UTC)

Hi Vsmith: Maybe you can clear up for me what Mike Norton is talking about by saying that folding is a term inapplicable to the Himalayas and to the Alps, which seemingly would suggest that reference to orogeny in the connection of folding causing these mountains might be misplaced? In any event, is it generally accepted that geomorphologists use orogeny differently than geologists? Are you aware that Ollier quotes King, Burg & Ford, Jackson (the bible for English speaking geologists, according to them), and Allmendinger & Jourdan as support for their definition of orogen? Terminology is a bitch. Brews ohare (talk) 00:24, 5 February 2010 (UTC)

I think Mike Norton meant exactly what he said: that folding is not the major player in the formation of the Alps and Himalaya. And that thrust tectonics is more important in those orogenies. Yes terminology can be a bitch. I don't have access to the Ollier book to see the details of their argument or the source of their defs. Vsmith (talk) 01:22, 5 February 2010 (UTC)
Thanks Vsmith, that's all I was trying to say and that was regarding use of the term 'fold mountain', nothing specifically to do with 'orogeny' v. 'mountain building'. Mikenorton (talk) 07:29, 5 February 2010 (UTC)

The biggest point, it seems to me, is that orogenesis refers to many processes that have to do with rock formation, rock movements and erosion, and the connection to mountain building is only that somewhere in the cycle it happens that mountains appear. Calling orogeny mountain building is like calling cancer a cough, it confuses a symptom with the disease. Brews ohare (talk) 00:42, 5 February 2010 (UTC)

Mountains are a geologically fleeting product of an orogeny, wait a few hundred million years and they're eroded away leaving just the crumpled deformed roots as evidence. So, no orogeny is not "just" mountain building - mountains are just formed during the process. Vsmith (talk) 01:22, 5 February 2010 (UTC)
To add on: it's not just somewhere in the cycle that mountain-building occurs, it's during the entire time that there is significant shortening and thickening of the crust (due to faulting and/or folding). However, even when any active processes have stopped and all that is left is the roots and perhaps related sedimentary basins, it is still called an "orogeny", though in the way of "the Proterozoic Penokean orogeny". This is because the rocks found there are the result of this orogeny. Awickert (talk) 01:52, 5 February 2010 (UTC)
Hi guys. I am really enjoying reading this thread, I am learning a lot. Is any of this going to be back posted into the articles it seems a shame to lose it. But can I drag the discussion back to the articles, which remain remain inpenetrable (nor used pejoratively) to the general reader. You seem to suggest that Mountain building is the portal- as it certainly has a title that uses two words that a first degree level student would have in their vocab, they then would bore down into Orogeny orStratovolcano or whatever. So this article needs to be softer and more welcoming. It is also important that all the links are checked so the reader gets a continuous experience. Uniformity in presentation helps.
The Orogeny can be greatly improved by by a introducing a ==Terminology== section after the lead where a more general introduction can be given to the field, and definition problems. There seems to be no predictable ==heading== names in the geology/geomormology articles I have scanned, perhaps this can be thought about and fixed. My final problem which I will open as a separated thread is that of the diagrams- colour seem to be used randomly, so that a strata may be beige on one diagram and pink on the diagram below, and colour should be leading the general reader to the understanding of the concept.--ClemRutter (talk) 10:10, 5 February 2010 (UTC)
Glad you're enjoying the thread! There aren't many geologists here, so the articles are a bit haphazard. I think that terminology would ideally be handled via wikilink or inline notes where the terms appear, though a section could be added if it's really needed. If you could give us specifics of what is impenetrable to you, it will help us coordinate our work, Awickert (talk) 02:13, 6 February 2010 (UTC)