Talk:Central Basin and Range ecoregion

Against merge

Against the merge. This article is about a distinct ecoregion. After this article is fully thrashed out like other ecoregion articles, it can be reviewed once again. Famartin (talk) 04:06, 23 November 2011 (UTC)

Agree and removed tag, proposer gave no reason for merge. Vsmith (talk) 10:26, 23 November 2011 (UTC)

Arrrggghhh.

USGS Central Basin and Range ecoregion map

user:Hike395 The Federal gvt can't even agree on boundaries. The USGS map in the article has a different boundary than the EPA map. I made the map on the right using the GIS files from this webpage In this one, the CB&Re doesn't have that little "panhandle" going up into Idaho. The area is 119,224.584 square miles (308,790.26 km²), which is close to the area stated in the article, but the USGS site that the map in article comes from says 132,498 square miles (343,170 km²). The EPA map seems to be a newer one than the one referenced in the USGS article, which talks about a 1997 EPA article, rather than the this 2011 one.

That being said. I would go along with directing the Great Basin Desert article to this one, and basically saying that the NPS boundaries of the Great Basin desert correspond with the USGS boundaries, only it includes approximately 18,000 square miles (47,000 km²) in NW Nevada and SE Oregon}}. But, all three areas are pretty much identical as far as ecology. I think it could be justified by the 2011 EPA document which equates the deserts to ecoregions. Lynn (SLW) (talk) 14:10, 18 July 2015 (UTC)

There's also this EPA map with shape files, which I bet are the same ones I downloaded from the other EPA webpage. But, this map was modified in 2013, so it's the most up to date. Lynn (SLW) (talk) 14:41, 18 July 2015 (UTC)

Argh, indeed. Ecological divisions are not "real" --- i.e., they are all artifacts of whomever makes the division. And as you point out, no two ecologists can precisely agree on the boundaries, because exact boundaries usually don't exist. Many WP editors seem to fall in love with one of the division schemes, and so we get a proliferation of overlapping confusing articles (e.g., Great Basin Desert, Central Basin and Range ecoregion, Great Basin shrub steppe, Great Basin Floristic Province). I think we've done a good job at following WP:NPOV, attributing the division to a human agency, and not pretending that one is true. But I feel pity for our poor readers who just want to learn about the ecology of the area, and not have to figure out which one of these articles to read.

Unfortunately, every time I try to merge two of these articles, I get strenuous objections and reversions from other editors. I think part of the problem is that editors don't see what the eventual article will be like, so they oppose the merge.

One proposal for the next step: let's first write a merged article that combines Great Basin Desert, Central Basin and Range ecoregion, and perhaps Great Basin shrub steppe at Talk:Central_Basin_and_Range_ecoregion/merged Editors will have something concrete to read, and then we can see if we get consensus to merge.

Alternatively, we can sidestep the issue by creating a new article Ecology of Nevada that would be a reader-friendly overview of the ecology of the area. Even though Nevada isn't exactly the same as the Great Basin Desert, we can put the Desert's ecological information in the overview, leaving discussion of the boundaries and area-specific information to the more technical, overlapping articles.

What do other editors think? Lynn? —hike395 (talk) 16:22, 18 July 2015 (UTC)

I think we should do like we did in the Great Basin article and start it off by explaining all the division schemes. I definitely don't want to do another article. I think some of the push back you got previously may have been because you were proposing merges that didn't quite fit. But, I think all these fit together, and it's been four years. I think we should try again.Lynn (SLW) (talk) 18:02, 18 July 2015 (UTC)

OK. I'll start working at Draft:Central Basin and Range ecoregion (I just found out about the Draft: namespace). Everyone should feel free to join in.

I wonder whether the merged article should be titled "Great Basin Desert", though. If you look at the five criteria for article names at WP:TITLE, "Great Basin Desert" is preferred over "Central Basin and Range ecoregion" for recognizability, naturalness, and conciseness. (The ecoregion name is more precise). Both article titles have parallel structure (are consistent with) other Wikipedia article titles. —hike395 (talk) 19:22, 18 July 2015 (UTC)

Well, I live in the Great Basin Desert, not the Central Basin and Range ecoregion, if that gives you a clue. I also still hesitate to include the Great Basin floristic province. The boundaries of the rest all jive, but that one seems to be it's own animal. Lynn (SLW) (talk) 19:26, 18 July 2015 (UTC)

Northern Nevada? SE Oregon? —hike395 (talk)

Western Utah Lynn (SLW) (talk) 23:40, 18 July 2015 (UTC)

Also, I don't even know what to do with the Great Basin shrub steppe. Other than a passing reference to the WWF (hardly a neutral source), there's no indication where the term came from. Unless someone can produce an RS for it, I think it should have an RfD. Lynn (SLW) (talk) 19:57, 18 July 2015 (UTC)

Okay, so I did find this and it looks like the WWF has it's own set of ecoregions on wp The derivation of the map on the article says it's from this source. It looks to be identical to the USGS area. Lynn (SLW) (talk) 20:47, 18 July 2015 (UTC)

Years ago, the WWF ecoregion hierarchy was the WP ecoregion hierarchy. Several editors (including myself) pointed out this was a violation of WP:NPOV. I think everything is fine now that the WWF ecoregions are labeled as coming from the WWF. WWF based their North American ecoregion on Omernik's regions, which was also a predecessor to the EPA ecoregions. So, there's a lot of overlap between the two systems.

The draft isn't finished, but the framework is largely complete. Check out Draft:Central Basin and Range ecoregion. —hike395 (talk) 21:57, 18 July 2015 (UTC)

Made some edits and comments Lynn (SLW) (talk) 23:34, 18 July 2015 (UTC)

History of ecoregion definition

I did more editing. I wrote this paragraph, which I then removed because of WP:SYNTH, but it is worthwhile to record here, because it explains the merge:

Although these definitions do not perfectly agree, the NPS-defined Great Basin Desert largely overlaps the WWF Great Basin shrub steppe and the EPA Central Basin and Range ecoregion.

I wouldn't call that synth. All you're doing is comparing map boundaries. That's a pretty routine analysis, not OR or synth. But, here's what it looked like happened to me: In the 1980's Omernik came out with his ecoregions, and they were adopted by the EPA: "The Central Basin and Range ecoregion is one of 84 Level-III ecoregions as defined by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA, 1999, Omernik, 1987)"(USGS 2006) and the WWF: "The ecoregion boundary follows Omernik" page 327 except that the WWF excised out some small areas on the range summits and called them "montane". Fair enough. In 2003, the EPA revised its ecoregions as shown on this map, but in 2006, the USGS used the old boundaries in its report. It looks like the NPS also took the same area (looks like whoever did so drew it free hand rather than use GIS) and added in some area to the northwest (this must have been prior to 2008, because that's when the NPS map was first uploaded to wp). In 2012, USGS put out an update of the 2006 document with a map where it called the original (pre 2003) Central Basin and Range ecoregion the "Great Basin Desert". In 2013, the EPA refined the boundaries again.

Okay, so can you tell historical cartography is a hobby of mine? Anyway, the bottom line is, they aren't really "definitions" but derivations of the same area. They started out using the pre-2003 boundaries, and the USGS and the WWF still use those, but the NPS added some area and the EPA removed some.Lynn (SLW) (talk) 14:00, 19 July 2015 (UTC)

OK, I think I've worked enough on the draft. Would anyone else like to work on it, or should we move to proposing the merge? —hike395 (talk) 09:37, 19 July 2015 (UTC)

Let me play with it a little more. Lynn (SLW) (talk) 15:44, 19 July 2015 (UTC)

user:Hike395, do you have a copy of the 2011 Grayson? As I mentioned before, all I have is the 2003 version. The 2011 version is on Google Books, and looks like it has been substantially revised; the title has even changed. I suggest we change all the refs to the 2011 version. Lynn (SLW) (talk) 12:13, 20 July 2015 (UTC)

I don't have a copy --- I just looked at the 2011 edition in Google Books. We can probably change the refs after we get consensus for the merge: I don't think people will veto a merge just because of references to a previous edition :-). —hike395 (talk) 06:10, 21 July 2015 (UTC)

I know, it's no big deal. Just better to be able to refer to online editions.

So, the one paragraph that we keep going back and forth on...I think between the two of us we're pinning this down. Omernik's original "Northern Basin and Range" became the WWF's "Great Basin Shrub Steppe". In the late 1990's the EPA renamed the original "Northern Basin and Range" to "Central Basin and Range" and split Omernik's "Snake River Basin/High Desert" and renamed it the "Northern Basin and Range" and "Snake River Plain". By 2003, the EPA had refined the boundaries, extending the Northern Basin and Range further east and contracting the eastern portion of the Central Basin and Range further south, separating it from the Snake River Plain ecoregion. BUT when Soulard (USGS) wrote his report in 2006, he used the original, but renamed, Omernik boundary of the Central Basin and Range so it is essentially the same boundary as that for the Great Basin Shrub Steppe. Maybe an endnote is in order to try to explain all of this. Lynn (SLW) (talk) 10:45, 21 July 2015 (UTC)

@LynnWysong: An endnote might work well for the history. Let me take what you wrote, above, and try to attribute each sentence to a WP:RS and mark it up ---

Omernik's original "Northern Basin and Range" became the WWF's "Great Basin Shrub Steppe". In the late 1990's the EPA renamed the original "Northern Basin and Range" to "Central Basin and Range" and split Omernik's "Snake River Basin/High Desert" and renamed it the "Northern Basin and Range" and "Snake River Plain". By 2003, the EPA had refined the boundaries, extending the Northern Basin and Range further east and contracting the eastern portion of the Central Basin and Range further south, separating it from the Snake River Plain ecoregion. BUT when Soulard (USGS) wrote his report in 2006, he used the original, but renamed, Omernik boundary of the Central Basin and Range so it is essentially the same boundary as that for the Great Basin Shrub Steppe.

I could not find the 2003 refinement in Grayson, 2011. -- and I'm not sure that it is that important to include. The last statement is drawing a conclusion from Soulard that he, himself, did not state, which is exactly what WP:SYNTH describes.

@Hike395::Soulard did say it: he referenced the 1999 EPA ecoregions in his reports, and a comparison of the maps confirms it: The USGS boundary is the same as the WWF. I just don't think that comparing two map boundaries and saying they are the same is synth. I think it fits more under this exception: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:These_are_not_original_research#Compiling_facts_and_information Let me clean up the refs some more this afternoon. But, this is what I've been trying to get at since the beginning: The USGS is using the old (pre 2003) boundaries, not the current EPA ones. Lynn (SLW) (talk) 14:59, 21 July 2015 (UTC)

I think all we need to say is that the Great Basin Desert is "encompassed within" the Central Basin and Range ecoregion, and that the WWF derived the "Great Basin Shrub Steppe" from (a previous version of) the Central Basin and Range ecoregion, and then I think we've done all we need to do to describe the situation.

I think we may have a misunderstanding here. Notice that, above, I marked "he used the original, but renamed, Omernik boundary of the Central Basin and Range" with a reference to Soulard, 2006. That's fine and clear from Soulard, no one is disputing that. What I marked as synth is the statement "it is essentially the same boundary as that for the Great Basin Shrub Steppe". Soulard never mentions the WWF at all, so that's a conclusion that you're drawing by correlating two sources --- the WWF and Soulard. It's totally fine to make that correlation and discuss it here at the Talk page, and use it as an argument for the merge. We just can't put it into the article, because it is a form of original research --- it's almost a classic example of synthesizing a conclusion between two sources that neither states. Take a look at the example in WP:SYNTH about Smith, Jones, and Harvard --- it has a parallel structure.

I don't have time to edit the draft today, but I will take another crack at editing the paragraph. I think we're essentially ready for the merge discussion -- we can always edit it more, later, but I didn't want WP:SYNTH to sidetrack the merge discussion. —hike395 (talk) 15:19, 21 July 2015 (UTC)

@Hike395: I know what you're having heartburn over, but in my mind, it's analogous to this exception to the synth policy: "Identifying synonymous terms, and collecting related information under a common heading is also part of writing an encyclopedia. Reliable sources do not always use consistent terminology, and it is sometimes necessary to determine when two sources are calling the same thing by different names. This does not require a third source to state this explicitly, as long as the conclusion is obvious from the context of the sources. Articles should follow the naming conventions in selecting the heading under which the combined material is presented."

Grayson

On page 32 of Grayson, he says: "One of the best-known of these stems from ecologist James Omernik's definition of eco-regions for the continental United States, a system that has been adopted by the Environmental Protection Agency and the World Wildlife Fund...."

It's only in the 2011 version.

Sorry, I missed it (searched for EPA and WWF, not the whole phrase). Restoring the refs. —hike395 (talk) 07:03, 23 July 2015 (UTC)

Are we ready?

Are we ready to get consensus on the merge? I think the draft is more than adequate. —hike395 (talk) 07:03, 23 July 2015 (UTC)

I'm good with it.Lynn (SLW) (talk) 10:33, 23 July 2015 (UTC)

I'll propose the merge, tonight. —hike395 (talk) 15:29, 23 July 2015 (UTC)

I don't know if you saw the comment I made on the Great Basin talk page, but I went ahead and made the change here, to make it consistent with the Mojave Desert page. What do you think?

I agree that the climate boxes are overwhelming --- there's an easy fix, which is to start them off as "collapsed", and allow users to open them if they want to see the data. —hike395 (talk) 15:29, 23 July 2015 (UTC)

Incidently, the Mojave Desert doesn't have separate articles for the ecoregions and the desert. Mojave Basin and Range ecoregion diverts to Mojave Desert. Lynn (SLW) (talk) 11:04, 23 July 2015 (UTC)

Are you thinking of this in the context of this merge, or for future work? —hike395 (talk) 15:29, 23 July 2015 (UTC)

For this merge. But, It think that the Great Basin page should also reference the Great Basin and Mojave Deserts more. For instance, there could be a small blurb about the climate, but then say "For more info..."Lynn (SLW) (talk) 01:08, 24 July 2015 (UTC)