Talk:Physiographic region

Sub-sections
Does anybody see the need to also list the different physiographic sub-sections, if an area has been broken out to that level? wbfergus undefinedTalk 11:45, 9 December 2007 (UTC)

Adirondacks
I moved them into the Canadian Shield since they are truly part of that physiographic region. They are not related to the Appalachians at all.Jmpenzone (talk) 16:40, 10 January 2008 (UTC)

Intermontane Plateaus v Interior System
"Intermontane Plateaus" is a US term; the Canadian equivalent is Interior System - eee Physiographic regions of British Columbia and the accompanying maps. The site is unofficial but is a distilation of a classification in the official BC Govt-defined geography Landforms of British Columbia, S. Holland (1964, 1976) and which is the basis of the British Columbia Geographical Names Information System and the provincial basemap. The reason for the non-use of the term "plateaus" here is that northern BC is not plateaus, but a system of mountain ranges known in Holland's nomenclature as the Interior Mountains, which include such complexes as the Hazelton Mountains, Skeena Mountains, Omineca Mountains and Cassiar Mountains as well as the Tagish and Tahltan Highlands; similarly farther south the Interior Plateau includes various mountain ranges as well as the Quesnel, Shuswap and Okanagan Highlands. The Intermontane Plateaus physiographic region is esseentially the same region, just with a different; I note that his use of Interior Plains conforms to designations already here; maybe Western System and Eastern System are correspond, or there maybe are American equivalent terms for extensions of the same classification/concept. Just to note also that the Skeena Mountains and others listed here as being in the Yukon-Tanana Uplands are not designated so in Canada, except maybe in geologic or ecologic classifications (see below). Just wondering what to do here; easy enough to redirect interior System to Intermontane Plateaus but how to indicate these usages in the table; using Interior System for the Canadian entries would tend to indicate that it was a different system from Intermontane Plateaus; maybe a common footnote to indicate both terms are the same, or a sect-hatnote at the top of the table? Once that's settled I'll populated the table further....Skookum1 (talk) 17:30, 12 January 2009 (UTC)

Mixing of geologic, ecologic and geographic regions is OR/Synth
As per discussions on Western Cordillera (North America) and elsewhere, this article is OR and Synth in various ways because its mixing of elements/definitions from various fields. I just removed Fraser Plateau and Basin complex because it's a WWF ecoregion, not a landform - "Fraser Basin" doesn't mean in geography what you'd think it means (i.e. teh Fraser River watershed) and it also doesn't mean waht ecological science defines it as; the same region in geology is part of the Intermontane Belt and/or Omineca Belt (see this map of BC's geological regions/"belts". This article mixes geology in with physiography in various ways, and it's confusing important definitions; by combining definitions/history from geology with those from geography/physiography/toponymy, WP:Synthesis is what results.  This is a common problem across geography/geography/ecology articles and it has to be straightened out - e.g. Arctic Cordillera should be a geographic description article with only basic geologic content; detailed geologic content would be in something perhaps titled Natural history of the Arctic Archipelago or Geology of the Arctic Archipelago, and the Ecozone zonetent there should be relegated to Arctic Archipelago Ecozone (CEC) (CEC indicating this is an Environment Canada classification, rather than a WWF one or one from another body/org). I changed all the contents, other than that one (so far) in Category:Ecozones of Canada because many had titles that made them sound like landform articles, and some were/are even written that way. In teh same Geologic provinces are not the same as landform-classification systems, they're very different (compare Cascade Volcanoes and Cascade Range for example). So between the table needing pruning/redefining and much of the body of this article needign some rewrite, and noting the merge/split proposals at the top, I have to strongly urge that the respective contents/agendas of WP:Geology, WP:Geography and WP:Ecology and WP:Environment are kept clearly separate. To even begin suggesting othewise is OR/Synth.....Skookum1 (talk) 17:30, 12 January 2009 (UTC)
 * Seconding the view that this article has a lot of OR/synth, I cannot seem to find any reference that supports the "Compendium table of the worlds[sic] physiographic regions." In particular, no book I have seen on geomorphology in Africa uses the same divisions as are shown in this table. The original author here, Wbfergus, put a lot of effort in; is there a source I am missing?  Owenozier (talk) 02:33, 16 December 2009 (UTC)
 * Hi all. I have returned from a long break (real busy with work), so let me try to explain and help you guys decide which is the best way, or most correct. About 7 years or so ago, I needed to develop a lookup table for one of my databases with this information. Finding this for the US was easy, but the rest of the world was extremely difficult. I headed down the hall to our library, and wound up finding some maps of physiographic regions that were drawn back around 70 years or so ago by Edwin Raisz, Armin Lobeck, and others (looking at the article, I see I don't Raisz listed in the refs). I eventually compiled this the list in the article after some additional research through other sources, and several years later I deceided that I had such a hard time finding this information, I might as well add it here and hopefully help others who might find themselves in a similar situation. (I'm going strictly from memory here), As I was going through trying to get this all figured out, looking in geomorphology and other 'types' of information sources, I noticed that there is quite a bit of overlap with many of the names across disciplines. In some case it appeared that the actual 'boundaries' matched, while in others it appeared that 'boundaries' overlapped into part of another discipline's definition of something else. What I originally put up here is not complete or accurate by any means, I was confused on some areas, but placed the information if I was able to find it in one of the sources I used. Evidently I missed listing all of the resources I used (like Raisz), but most of the major ones I think I did list. All of the maps, etc. are all at the office and I am on vacation now, so I can't easily add the missing refs back in.


 * I think that I should (or least re-emphasize), that what I started with was only 'regions' that were originally referenced as physiographic 'regions' by somebody else. If quite a few cases while trying to find additional descriptions of these physiographic regions, I noticed that the same name also applied to ecological, geographical and other 'region types' from various science disciplines. In quite a few cases of this subset, the boundaries matched, but in others they didn't. It would really be difficult to identify these without a full-fledged GIS system with all of the boundaries layered appropriately, but to my knowledge, this does not exist anywhere. The closest I was able to find existed only for the US.


 * So, before anything is deleted as being OR/Synth, please do some careful and thorough research. Most of this information is merely 'names', and quite a few disciplines use the same names but with different meanings. In this case (physiography), these are (or at least were, when the original maps were drawn), the names used. I know it was quite a long time ago for most of them, but only a couple of cases was I able to find where somebody had 'redefined' a couple of the areas. Regarding the question/statement about Africa above, since the map is at work, on the article it has ref#16 to the Indiana University of Pennsylvania page, and I "think" the map I used is the same as they list as #62. I hope this helps clarify that point.


 * I am not a scientist studying these particular 'regions', merely a database administrator, but the scientists I work with generally have agreed with the compiled list I put together. It is (and was) my hope that folks how are subject matter experts in 'physiography' would eventually find this article and improve it, maybe even by working with the folks from the other disciplines who use the same names but with different meanings.


 * Hope this helps explain my original thought process, etc., but I don't think any of it is OR or Synth. Whatever I put together I was able to find in some other source somewhere. If I missed something, let me know and I'll go through my stack of stuff at work and see if I can find it, though most of it I found with simple Google searches, though in some cases it was following one link to a page then another link from that page, etc. wbfergus undefinedTalk 15:08, 17 December 2009 (UTC)


 * Thanks for the reply on the Africa points; I will have access to some of those hardcopy maps next month, so with any luck, I may link up specific sources then. In the meantime, perhaps someone more expert should weigh in as well. Owenozier (talk) 19:37, 18 December 2009 (UTC)

Unclear?
It is unclear to me how East Asia fits into this scheme...?andycjp (talk) 11:48, 8 March 2009 (UTC)

at least a fifth column needed, maybe a sixth
Intermontane Plateaus, Pacific Mountain System, Rocky Mountain System are subgroupings of Western Cordillera (North America), which itself is a subgrouping of American Cordillera, which includes the Sierra Madre System and Andean Sysstem. Lots of work to add that column, I'm not in the mood tonight to expand the table that drastically, just suggesting/serving notice it needs to be done. Other than that a sixth column may be needed because Intermontane Plateaus, or rather its Canadian equivalent-term Interior System, has a many-tiered substructure, i.e. Cassiar Mountains, Skeena Mountains, Hazelton Mountains, [[Stikine Plateau are all part of the Interior Mountains; the Interior Plateau has various plateaus and mountain ranges within it; that's not including the small ranges, I'm talking huge areas.....this has to do also with teh conflicting terms/classifications between the two countries; but this article can't rightly say 'of the world" if it uses only classification-tiers and moneclature from the American system. How to resolve it well I'm not sure, I'm just fielding the problem, and the next one too....Skookum1 (talk) 00:36, 24 March 2009 (UTC)

American v. Canadian terms/classification
I'm on the edge of expanding the contents of the table with the various groupings, but find it problematic because the table's existing terminology is USPOV. I won't clutter the masthead by adding globalize/USA, but am wondering about two solutions: In the US the Rocky Mountain System includes the Columbia Mountains; if I'm not mistaken (and I may be), the Canadian system places these as part of the Interior System; I'll double-check that but it's not the only variance; the BC term "Insular System" includes the Alexander Archipelago but the US system has that as part of the Pacific Mountain System. Plays hell with the table, ultimately.
 * footnoting is graphically unappealing as each instance of Intermontane Plateaus, for instance, would have to have a footnote saying "The term for this physiographic system in Canada is Interior System]]", and add onto that t he footnotes on each instance of Rocky Mountain System and Pacific Mountain System for, respectively, Eastern System and Western System (or Pacific Coast Ranges, though that term is a grouping of mountain ranges, the former is for the physiographci system and corresponds to the other two). Complicating this is that in BC's classification there's the Insular System, I think it is.
 * The other thing to do is have a mention in the foreword to the table what the Canadian terms are. This seems simplest but it gets a bit more compilcated because:
 * NB I've currently got Pacific Mountain System redirected to Pacific Coast Ranges but that's not quite right, I was "making do" as previously the first was redirected to the Western Cordillera (which includes the Rocky Mtn System and the Intermontane Plateaus). I think Pacific Mountain System equates to Western System in the Canadian/BC terminology/classification, but the Pacific Mountain System also includes what in CAnada/BC is the Insular System.....Skookum1 (talk) 00:38, 24 March 2009 (UTC)
 * See this map which shows the systems in British Columbia and some of the Yukon.Skookum1 (talk) 00:40, 24 March 2009 (UTC)

Presentation of Information in a Useful Way
This is not in the last about the actual data here or the citations needed to establish whose take on global geology we're talking about—I can't even claim dilettante knowledge in the subject area—but the very first sentence is a frightful mess:

"The physiographic regions of the world are a means of defining the Earth's landforms into distinct regions based upon Nevin Fenneman's classic three-tiered approach of divisions, provinces and sections,[1] in 1916,[2] which although they date from the mid 1910s, are still considered basically valid, and were the basis for similar classifications of other continents later.[3]"

Various problems: Citation 1, apparently a University of Connecticut geology class handout on PDF, is not available; in any case it is not clear why one would use curricular materials instead of or in addition to the primary text at citation 2! Fenneman's foundational work is dated twice in two consecutive phrases for no reason. 'although they date from...' 'they' is an incorrect pronoun reference: the approach dates from the mid 1910s, not the divisions, provinces, and sections 'Other continents' than WHAT?  Doing an edit to clean this up. Sebum-n-soda (talk) 16:46, 22 January 2011 (UTC)


 * Ouch, yes that is painful to read. This whole page needs a lot of work, whatever you can do is appreciated. There's some info and references about Fenneman over at United States physiographic region, which might be useful (that page needs work too!). Pfly (talk) 22:51, 22 January 2011 (UTC)

Official list?
I looked through the citations, and I couldn't find a comprehensive list for anyplace other than the U.S. Is this based on any sort of official list? It seems like it isn't. Also, large parts of the world are entirely omitted from the list (e.g. East asia, Southeast asia, Polynesia.) Unless somebody can find an official list, the article should probably be changed to reflect the lack thereof. Cghsci (talk) 09:30, 1 January 2015 (UTC)
 * I can't speak for the other Canadian sections, but the BC items are modelled on the system used by the British Columbia Names Office, based on a government publication from the 1950s or so which forms the basis for the geographic classifications and nomenclature in the province. So that part, at least, is official for BC, I'd expect the same for Canada as a whole because WPCANADA people go by National Geophysical Survey definitions and research.Skookum1 (talk) 11:04, 1 January 2015 (UTC)
 * Complicating issue is that American and Canadian official systems often do not share terms, very much on purpose historically; same applies to ecoregions etc.Skookum1 (talk) 11:06, 1 January 2015 (UTC)

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