Talk:Riparian zone

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copy merged talk pages to this page
THE FOLLOWING TALK MATERIAL HAS BEEN COPIED HERE FROM THE ARTICLE Riparian strips PRIOR TO MERGER OF Riparian strips INTO Riparian zone:

zone or strip
i have only seen this in the technical literature as "riparian zone". is this a regional thing? Anlace 20:26, 4 April 2006 (UTC)

ethnocentric changes
So nice how this page has been so utterly "americanized" in it's content. Previously we had some very good Canadian content that was less national in it's focus and more functional. Did that offend the patriotism of the Americans or something somehow showing that they weren't the only country in the northern hemisphere? American examples, American references, blah blah blah... I liked the old pages better!

Stop it. If you liked the old pages better, then you would have cut and pasted and saved them, so, re-posting the stuff you liked that's now gone should not be any real problem, right? That's what honest people do when they know something they like the way it is might get changed and lost forever. But truth cannot get lost forever; it can only be temporarily misplaced or forgotten; but it is always in nature to be reobserved any time we wish or is not real truth in the first place. Or, perhaps you are you just complaining to complain, before thinking? Science is only ethnocentric if ethnicities NOT contributing to an article LET it be. And every article in Wiki is in constant evolution, forever, NEVER in a final format to pass final judgement upon; if you don't like it, change it: that's the whole point. It is every culture and nation's job to represent itself, or truth as it sees it, and then let the real truth be squeezed out in the smelting of the process. Don't blame a culture for doing too much work; blame others for not doing enough. The great thing about Wikipedia is, anyone who wants to be diligent and do their homework and is persistent enough can post any edits they want to an article and they will likely remain if enough others agree your article edits and references make sense, are real, and explicate the subject matter. And this is true regardless of ethnicity, culture, national affiliation, religion, education, wealth (as long as you have computer & net access), health, age, vocation, avocation, sexual orientation, etc, etc. You just can't get more egalitarian or objective than that. So what you are really complaining about is the supreme fairness of the situation, not unfairness, and I'm just not sure anyone can help you with that, but you. If you dislike the "Americanization", then feel free to add your own learned statements and erudite references and article sections worthy of surviving the chopping block, from your own national perspective, and make copies separately so you can add them back if some moron deletes them and they were right, just like everyone else does who cares to preserve something they like, and quit complaining that it is Americans (or whoever else) bothering to do the bulk of the work in any given article. 'If you want something done right, you've got to do it yourself.' Every person will approach every subject from the perspective of their own experience and culture, including this one, including you, including me; that is not a fault, it is a strength, so long as EVERYONE from EVERY national perspective does it too. So, do it! If an article is culturally biased, that is because other cultures are not contributing enough, not because one culture is contributing too much, or, the wrong kind of truth; if it is true at all, it is not the wrong kind; there is no such thing as too much wisdom, or a wrong kind of wisdom, unless redundant or irrelevant or false; if an article is insufficently complete, however, that's the fault of those that know things they refuse to contribute, NOT of the contributors: THEY'RE doing THEIR part! That's the whole point of Wikipedia, is to pool our collective wisdom, nationally and internationally, not complain at someone else's initiative and wisdom, but to add our own to it. Feel free to also do so from your own cultural and national perspective, but in a constructive way that actually contributes to everyone's knowledge, rather than expecting another culture to do your culture's work for it. Otherwise, stop being culture-centric. I like Canadians; nearly all us Americans do. Stop giving us less reason to like you with unreasonable reasoning.

merger
No this merger should NOT occur. Riparian zone is the natural riparian area that is, or should be encapsulated in that designation. A riparian strip can, and often does refer to a legislative designation that may, or may not encompass the acual riparian zone. Two different concepts that are misunderstood obviously.

Riparian zone has a natural function. Riparian strip has a designation. If you don't understand this, then you shouldn't be commenting on this in the first place.

merger
this merger is logical. both articles address the same point. riparian is an adjective and should not be the surviving name. i would propose the surviving name be Riparian zone...what do others think? Anlace 20:31, 4 April 2006 (UTC)
 * First up, I agree that "riparian" is an adjective and should not be the title of the page. Further, to me, a riparian zone is the ecotone (ecological interface) between a water course and land. It makes no assumption about what is actually living there. Does "riparian strip" imply there is a certain quantity of higher plants growing? I don't really use the term enough to know. If the implication is absent of weak, I agree with the merger, and the final page being "riparian zone". Cheers, Daniel Collins 20:53, 4 April 2006 (UTC)

copy talk page from riparian to this page
THE FOLLOWING TALK MATERIAL HAS BEEN COPIED HERE FROM THE ARTICLE Riparian PRIOR TO MERGER OF Riparian INTO Riparian zone:

Most (but not all) of the material in this article should be merged into Riparian strips. A Riparian is the interface between water and land under erosive influences, a Riparian strip it the vegetation in this area. --Duk 00:35, 28 July 2005 (UTC)
 * done--Duk 21:51, 28 July 2005 (UTC)

Other riparian articles
I think separate topics should be separate articles in most cases, but riparian, riparian forest and riparian strips are so close in meaning that doesn't make sense to me to split them off. Anyone else? -- Kjkolb 11:59, 23 December 2005 (UTC)
 * I don't have a problem with merging these articles. My earlier edits involved moving information to the correct articles, not splitting. The different articles already existed.--Duk 01:06, 24 December 2005 (UTC)

I disagree. There are big differences between forested riparian zones (riparian forest) and grassland riparain zones (riparian strips). Maybe there should be an article that is a combo of riparian & riparian zones, then a riparian forest and then a riparian strips. Of course I am just limited into Eastern NA humid temp climates. when you add in arisd and semi-arid regions riparian areas take on even more meanings. --Ray 01:57, 24 December 2005 (UTC)

As written, the articles don't make a clear distinction between the terms. They use the same picture and riparian strip has a whole section on logging. I suggest that they be combined and each type have a section. -- Kjkolb 02:36, 24 December 2005 (UTC)

As written you are correct, the article are similar enough to combine them, however, I believe if the articles were developed further they would be much more different from each other. Maybe that is not realistic. We could combine them and have three (or more) major parts in which the different topics could be discussed and compared.--Ray 10:46, 24 December 2005 (UTC)

That would be good. -- Kjkolb 11:26, 24 December 2005 (UTC)

merger
all of the above comments seem reasonable. i would propose to merge first Riparian strips (should be singular!) and Riparian; perhaps more detailed articles could be created later such as Riparian forest, which article can be left alone for now. Anlace 20:36, 4 April 2006 (UTC)

merge completed of Riparian and Riparian strips into Riparian zone
this merger is completed following the general agreement noted above. i have preserved all of the concepts and images. Anlace 18:45, 7 April 2006 (UTC)

one loose end (newest merger proposal)
i just noticed another article which appears to address the same topic. it is called Riparian buffer zones. i propose a merger of that article (which only has inlinks from one other article) into Riparian zones. it has some useful info and a decent reference list which should survive. what do others think? Anlace 18:49, 7 April 2006 (UTC)
 * All abaord. It'll be good to have a more direct interface among these themes. Cheers, Daniel Collins 19:39, 7 April 2006 (UTC).

Riparian Zone Schematic : Image text needs editing
To reiterate a previous user's discussion : There's a typo in the description of this image (Everclades for Everglades) but I (being a newbie) don't know how to get to it to fix it. I'm sure SOMEONE can! --Mpwrmnt 05:49, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image_talk:Riparian_zone_florida_everglades.gif"

I too am a newbie, and can't figure out how to correct this problem. Can someone help? 75.52.126.214 03:25, 12 July 2007 (UTC)


 * I fixed it. It's an image from Wikimedia Commons, so you had to click the link "its description page there" in the text "This is a file from the Wikimedia Commons. The description on its description page there..." and then edit. Pfly 05:23, 12 July 2007 (UTC)

Thank you. I now understand how you made the correction, and see that it has been applied to the image description in the Wikimedia Commons. However, when I call up the reference from the Riparian zone article, it still contains the typo. I don't understand what is going on : is there some caching mechanism that has not yet been updated?

Riparian Zones/Strips as Preservers of/Refuges for Remnant Ancient Biodiversity
Perhaps I missed it, but an article entry on Riparian Zones should, it seems to me, include mention of how in many areas of the world, seasonal or perennial streams are remnant watersheds of once vaster precipitation per annum; when these wetter climates changed to drier, what were once vast continuous forested or even rain-forested areas split with huge rivers and puncuated by large lakes slowly shrank till the only remaining reminders of these former forests are tiny isolated enclaves of trees and underbrush in shaded ravines or valleys near these streams, the sole surviving descendants of ancestral species once living in the greater region, or, at the tops of higher mountains and hills where precipitation remains sufficient, and the rest of the region desertified or "savannah-ized" This great drying out of the world-wide climate in the last few tens of thousands of years and the retreat of many Ice Age glaciers resulted in stressors on many species of Pleistocene & Pliocene megafauna around the world which probably at least in part contributed, along with the affects of early man's predations and a possible extraterrestrial micro-meteorite bombardment of earth, to their extinction. It should be made clear in the article the big-picture long-term historical ecologic & environmental significance of Riparian Zones: while Riparian Zones are often viewed from a thoroughly modern perspective of the need to preserve and protect the often rich biodiversity concentrations located in them, from a geologic history perspective, they can and often do more accurately actually represent not richness of biodiversity, but instead, the only surviving ragtag handful of what was once a much vaster richer collection of species which were in ages past the predominant floral and faunal biodiversity in a region in much wetter times, now restricted only to those narrow isolated belts where sufficient water still collects to permit their survival, while the rest of the region slowly but surely succumbed to a combination of naturally occurring wildfires and drought. (((Of course, efforts should be made to protect them either way; but longer-term historic perspective is useful, especially in regards the man-made climate change hoax. Earth's climate naturally changes and changes drastically in long-term cycles of Ice Ages & Volcanic Ages that have a far greater impact on the environment than man does and there is not a damned thing we can start doing or stop doing that will ever change that. While efforts to control REAL forms of toxic pollution should always be encouraged, carbon, if cleanly burned, is not a pollutant, or if it is, then let's exterminate all life to expunge the earth of it, while we are at it. Cap & Trade is a scam and scare tactic designed to improve bureaucratic revenue, not improve the environment.)))

In fact, when you think about it, the flora and fauna in a region in general, outside what is normally considered Riparian zone in limited belts in washes and ravines, even far from water shed streams, are in fact also remnant surviving biodiversity of a once even vaster range of lifeforms in the area, a slightly richer set in the riparian zones themselves due to more water, but now extinct in the surrounding region save in other riparian zones, which are in turn also remnant biodiversity incompletely representative of an even greater set of lifeforms that existed in the general region in even earlier even wetter ages, which are now extinct there locally or everywhere federally.

Also, I am not sure if there is a specific term for it, but we see the same phenomenon occuring in the shrinking, splitting, and separating of these ancient shallow inland fresh water lakes as we do in the shrinking, splitting, and separating of the ancient forests. In the State of Nevada USA, for example, there are remnants of lakes hundreds of miles apart, deeper holes as it were in a once vast drying puddle, that were once joined, which contain similar kinds of obviously distantly related fish which have subsequently subspeciated since their separation.

I think both of these phenomenon should be mentioned and explained in relation to Riparian Zones for it to be a complete enough article.

Proposed new article: Riparian Ecosystem Ecology
I'm a riparian ecosystem ecologist. I've been interested to see how many articles revolving around riparian ecology exist: Riparian Zone, Riparian Buffer, Buffer Strip, Riparian Forest (a stub article), Riparian Zone Restoration, and Floodplain. All of these have unique contributions, often with the distinguishing feature being how much emphasis on management there is, or detailing a particular type of riparian ecosystem. What I think is lacking are the uniting themes across different types and functions of riparian ecosystems, as well as a general ecological description: their landscape ecology context, their unique biota and habitat characteristics, disturbance and succession regimes, and ecological functions like their biogeochemistry. There has been a successful effort among ecologists to unite much of the disparity across concepts of riparian zones under the banner of landscape and ecosystem ecology and boundary theory, which I think the existing articles can be well informed by.

Along these lines, I propose writing a Riparian Ecosystem Ecology article with emphasis on 1) what ecological description is missing from the existing articles and 2) the uniting themes of riparian ecosystems, and linking to these articles if/when there are better/deeper descriptions. Another strategy could be to merge, edit, and add to the existing articles (with the exception of the Riparian zone restoration article, which sits well on its own, and perhaps Buffer strip, which can pertain to structures that are arguably not “riparian ecosystems”) to make one unified article.

Looks like there has been contention about merging and adding articles in this area before, so I wanted to put it up for discussion before doing anything. Alx.webster (talk) 19:28, 12 January 2012 (UTC)

External links modified
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biome?
Riparian is also the proper nomenclature for one of the fifteen terrestrial biomes of the earth.

Is this true? It's uncited, and I find myself wondering whose system of classification it's referring to. The article at biome presents numerous classification schemes, but I don't see "riparian zone" listed in any of them--though it does appear in the box at the end of that article. 206.208.104.20 (talk) 18:54, 20 July 2017 (UTC)

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Singular focus on western species'
The focus on western riparian-zone plant species' leaves lacking such an overview for eastern species. Can anyone with more knowledge of the topic, fix the article to be more complete? It is a near-draft as is, yet in other sections, it is well-done and complete. SusquehannaMan (talk) 08:20, 24 August 2018 (UTC)

I want to contribute to this article with the following papers

 * S.M. Jacobs et al., (2007). Nutrient Vectors and Riparaian Processing: A renew with Spenal Reference to African Semi arid Savanna Ecosystem. Ecosystems. 10:1231-1249. Doi:10.1007/s10021-007-9092-1 — Preceding unsigned comment added by Goldona (talk • contribs) 15:07, 4 September 2023 (UTC)