Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Geology

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Flammenmergel

Hi, just wondering if someone could look at Flammenmergel - it doesn't seem to contain much information and could maybe be merged somewhere else (but I'm not sure where). Thanks. JMWt (talk) 15:39, 23 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

There is an entry for the Flammenmergel formation in the BGR online Litholex lithostratigraphic lexicon for Germany. Mikenorton (talk) 16:49, 23 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Looking at that, I see that the Group that this formation forms part of does not have an article, so that reduces our options. The list of sedimentary formations in Germany might be an option if all the wikidata from here was added in (although the Flammenmergel is not included I note). Mikenorton (talk) 17:27, 23 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Eemian or Last Interglacial?

I assume paleoclimatology is in scope for this project? I've been doing some reading about the topic of the

Eemian/Last Interglacial, and it seems to me that Eemian is really a Europe specific term, and that "Last Interglacial" is more widely used in the scientific literature for global coverage of this period, often without mentioning the term "Eemian" at all. Should the title of the article be changed? Hemiauchenia (talk) 21:10, 24 February 2024 (UTC)[reply
]

Could be. The last interglacial is known under several names of which "Eemian" is the most common but still less common than "Last Interglacial". Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk) 08:03, 25 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I've made a move request, see
Talk:Eemian#Requested_move_28_February_2024. Hemiauchenia (talk) 00:31, 28 February 2024 (UTC)[reply
]

Requested move at
Talk:Eemian#Requested move 28 February 2024

Talk:Eemian#Requested move 28 February 2024 that may be of interest to members of this WikiProject. Vanderwaalforces (talk) 09:13, 28 February 2024 (UTC)[reply
]

Stratigraphy model article

Among other topics I'm hoping to work on for the project, I have a hobby interest in geology, and thought I could do some good attending to the infinite list of tiny, poorly-written stratigraphy articles. Obviously, not all units are created equal but as I'm bungling around with these, a format exemplar would sure be handy. Is Marcellus Formation the best model article to use as far as overall structure and article goals are concerned? Lubal (talk) 19:59, 12 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Lubal. The Marcellus Formation does indeed look a good model to follow. Not sure you'll find that level of detail on many other formations though! If you're interest in UK units the BGS Lexicon of Named Rock Units is a good place to start. Silica Cat (talk) 11:36, 14 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
The Marcellus and Touchet formation articles are the most detailed ones I'm aware of. I also redid the Big Raven Formation article recently which is a GA nominee. Volcanoguy 14:04, 14 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Appreciated! Having some idea what the structure should look like makes this a lot easier. I'm going to be starting with Kansas/Missouri stratigraphy which seems fine, because wow, that subtopic area needs some love. I've been cleaning up Bonneterre Formation, but I'll probably move things around there a little bit before adding more content (of which there's quite a bit, including economic impact), just so it's laid out vaguely like the existing high-quality articles. Not that I'm going to pretend I'm writing high-quality articles, at least not yet. Lubal (talk) 14:14, 14 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I should note that since all geological formations are of different sizes and compositions it would be impossible to bring all articles about formations up to the level of detail as the Marcellus Formation article, especially if there's less information about a specific formation. Both Big Raven Formation and Edziza Formation passed GAN this month. Volcanoguy 22:10, 7 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Members and supergroups

While I was looking through the

supergroup (geology) don't have articles while the other three types of units (bed (geology), geological formation and group (stratigraphy)) have articles. Does anyone have an explanation for why this is? Volcanoguy 20:53, 15 March 2024 (UTC)[reply
]

@Volcanoguy: my best guess is that all stratigraphy is subdivided into formations and many of those are "grouped" into groups but that supergroups are relatively unusual (see category:Geological supergroups) and very few members are notable (see category:Geological members. As to "bed", there is a lot to say on the topic. Mikenorton (talk) 16:41, 10 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
@Mikenorton: Is there proof or evidence that very few members are notable? I understand most members redirect to formation articles but that could be because the member is not notable, few users have had the courage to write member articles or because there's no need for a separate member article; most formation articles I've seen aren't that big so splitting them would be unnecessary. Volcanoguy 17:08, 10 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
@Volcanoguy: Agreed, that is mostly why we don't have articles on individual members - formation articles are often only stubs anyway. A lot of our formation articles were created related to their fossil content and there has always been the presumption of notability for any formation article. I'm not sure that I can prove my suggestion about members, just a (probably unreliable) feeling. I've only worked on the Stac Fada Member, where notability was not a concern. Mikenorton (talk) 19:17, 10 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
@
WP:UNDUE concerns; the Sheep Track Member section in the Big Raven Formation article being more detailed than the other sections could have been problematic because the Sheep Track Member is only a minor sub-unit of the Big Raven Formation. Volcanoguy 16:06, 11 April 2024 (UTC)[reply
]

Proposal to remove the rankings for low abundance elements in the table

Please weigh in on my proposal on Talk:Abundance of elements in Earth's crust to split the table on that page. Johnjbarton (talk) 16:01, 21 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Unbalanced hypothesis presentation at Table Mountain (Tuolumne County, California)

I see that the "Sierra did not uplift strongly in the Pliocene" hypothesis is presented as a dominant theory at

fringe
, but it isn't commonly accepted (again, as far as I know).

I could dig into this, but I don't have the time to do it justice. Would any other editor like to step in? — hike395 (talk) 04:55, 10 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

If I somehow find the time I will take a look at it. Could be today, could also be in half a year, but it's on the list. --Licks-rocks (talk) 09:02, 10 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks! — hike395 (talk) 16:05, 10 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I have a large of PDFs of papers, disertations, theses, etc. about the geology of the Table Mountain in Tuolumne County, California, the Sierra Nevada, the "auriferous gravels," Ione Formation, and so forth. I have been meaning to use these to work on this and other articles. I guess it is time to look through all of this and see what I can do to revise this article. Paul H. (talk) 14:32, 12 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I think there are two different hypotheses that being discussed at this time:
1. One is that "...the Sierra Nevada has existed as a major topographic feature since at least the Late Miocene with mean elevations comparable with the modern..." \and
2. "...large-magnitude surface uplift in the last 3–4 Ma as a result of delamination and removal of a dense continental lithospheric root beneath the Sierra Nevada (46–49).
For an example, go see:
Mulch, A., Sarna-Wojcicki, A.M., Perkins, M.E. and Chamberlain, C.P., 2008. A Miocene to Pleistocene climate and elevation record of the Sierra Nevada (California). Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 105(19), pp.6819-6824. Paul H. (talk) 15:42, 12 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, you are correct. When I was talking about the minority hypothesis, I was referring to your hypothesis #1. I also have seen papers on hypothesis #2.[1][2] I don't know the level of acceptance of hypothesis #2. To make things more complex, if I understand correctly, the delamination hypothesis appears to explain uplift in the south Sierra but not in the north. — hike395 (talk) 23:28, 12 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

References

  1. doi:10.1016/j.epsl.2006.08.028
    .
  2. doi:10.2747/0020-6814.45.3.213
    .

Proposal to merge the sub-articles on crystalline types of ice

Please weigh in on my proposal on Talk:Ice#Merge all the ice sub-types into Phases of ice? to merge content from that page and the linked stub/start-class pages into a single medium-sized page. InformationToKnowledge (talk) 16:49, 10 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Adopting a policy concerning the relative abundance of less common elements?

A few weeks ago we revamped the table in Abundance of elements in Earth's crust. In discussing those changes, the related problem of the relative abundance of elements in individual or group pages on elements was raised.

As you may know, a determined IP user has been adding unsourced lines like:

  • It is the 45th most abundant element in the crust.

to elements like Hafnium, Europium, Erbium ‎and so on and on. These have been reverted. I removed a bunch more over the weekend.

A few pages, eg Lead have sources for relative abundance. The two sources that do give explicit relative abundance are Elmsley "Nature's building blocks : an A-Z guide to the elements" 2011 and Greenwood and Earnshaw (1997). Chemistry of the Elements (2nd ed.) There may be more. I don't know if the numbers in Elmsley vs Greenwood and Earnshaw agree.

I have not found any scientific or textbook discussion of relative abundance, but all of the primary and secondary sources on abundance make the point that the concentrations vary widely. The CRC handbook reports "median" values across multiple sources, saying something like "values of the less abundant elements may vary with location by several orders of magnitude."

In my opinion ranking the less abundant elements is not "knowledge" because the numerical value reported creates an illusion of solidity contrary to the evidence. Unfortunately our options are limited by the sources. For example we can't say "Hafnium is the around the 45th most abundant element in the crust" because that is not what the source says.

Some options for discussion:

  1. Status quo. The referenced ranking stay; the unreferenced ones are reverted.
  2. Agree that ranking are not notable. Remove the few existing ones. Revert additions.
  3. Add Elmsley values with ref but without comment.
  4. Add Elmsley values by name, eg "Elmsley reports Hafnium is the 45th most abundant element in the crust.(ref)"

(I picked Elmsley because its available online). While I would prefer to omit this "factoid" and in option 2, I lean to option 4 though I suppose our determined editor will just find some other way to "contribute".

Thoughts? Johnjbarton (talk) 16:22, 15 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Not being a geologist, I do have the book by Greenwood & Earnshaw, and I don't have any by Elmsley. On the iodine example I can say it does not agree to the other sources that I can consult online. This is what they say about the iodine abundance:

Iodine is considerably less abundant than the lighter halogens both in the earth's crust and in the hydrosphere. It comprises 0.46 ppm of the crustal rocks and is sixtieth in order of abundance (cf. Tl 0.7, Tm 0.5, In 0.24, Sb 0.2).

Wikipedia, on these days, says iodine is the 64th, while having mentioned the Greenwood-&-Earnshaw 0.46 ppm (strange).
On the other hand, a study of 300 various rocks' samples found that the iodine abundance is even lower 0.119 ppm (in continental earth's crust, the surface of which is "contaminated" by constantly cycling iodine from the richer oceanic crust and seawater).[1]
I'm being inclined to the option #2, but not that strict. I would avoid indicating the direct rank, shift focus to the distribution peculiarities, absolute concentrations or relative abundance if possible. To find the optimal path in the complex reference landscape, so to speak.
Tosha Langue (talk) 18:32, 15 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
By the way, I found a source that ranks an element roughly. "[...] lutetium, the scarcest REE (rate earth element), is about the 60th most abundant.[2] But I don't know if it is that reliable.
Yet another thought: an element's abundance rank may provide more sense when viewed along with another metric, characterizing the element's dissemination extent, right? But I don't know if such a measure exists.
Tosha Langue (talk) 08:45, 16 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
There's the Goldschmidt classification, but it's not quantitative. — hike395 (talk) 14:43, 16 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, thanks, we applied that across the table in Abundance of elements in Earth's crust. Johnjbarton (talk) 16:09, 16 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
All of the comments similar to: "lutetium, the scarcest REE (rate earth element), is about the 60th most abundant" are bogus in my opinion. The scarcity of an element is unrelated to its average concentration in the crust. Many elements are concentrated as pure metals in veins or in ores. Their average concentration may be very low but they can easily be mined and thus are not scarce.
Really the only significance of relative abundance is in relation to cosmology or geochemical cycle. And in those applications we are only interested in orders of magnitude. Johnjbarton (talk) 16:17, 16 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Bogus. Agree with the estimate! The best I managed to find is Clarke number. Tosha Langue (talk) 18:59, 16 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

References

  1. ^ https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0009254198000138
  2. ^ https://www.ga.gov.au/scientific-topics/minerals/mineral-resources-and-advice/australian-resource-reviews/rare-earth-elements

Late Glacial Interstadial and Bølling–Allerød warming

Are these two articles the same topic? The article on the Bølling–Allerød warming currently begins The Bølling–Allerød interstadial (Danish: [ˈpøle̝ŋ ˈæləˌʁœðˀ]), also called the Late Glacial Interstadial... which implies that it is exactly the same topic as the Late Glacial Interstadial article. If this is the case, then these two articles are clearly duplicates and should be merged. However, reading the academic literature, the term "Bølling–Allerød warming" seems to apply specifically to the sharp warming episode at the begnning of the interstadial, though I am not sure that would warrant a standalone article from the interstadial itself. Hemiauchenia (talk) 20:48, 21 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I've opened a merge discussion at Talk:Bølling–Allerød_warming. Participate if interested. Thanks. Hemiauchenia (talk) 21:01, 21 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
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