Talk:Southern England Chalk Formation

The one line Geology section was too short and somewhat inaccurate, so I've corrected and expanded it a bit. --Portnadler 13:09, 16 November 2005 (UTC)

Though perhaps there once was, there is now no 'Southern England Chalk Formation' - there is however a Chalk Group which is composed of the three stratigraphic formations, upper, middle and lower. In the light of this, I'd be minded to transfer suitable material from this article to the main Chalk Group article and keep this page just as a redirect. Any thoughts? cheers Geopersona (talk) 06:29, 17 February 2012 (UTC)
 * This answers a question that I recently posted on the talk page of the Chalk Group article, and I see that you've tidied up the inconsistency at that article as well. I'd support your suggestion of making this a redirect; I'm assuming that if/when you move material from here to Chalk Group, you'd make some reference to chalk formation being an old term - then readers will know how the term fits into the history of geological study? PaleCloudedWhite (talk) 08:26, 17 February 2012 (UTC)
 * You're right - some historical explanation is required - in fact I see that my comment above is already out of date - having learnt in the process of tidying the Chalk Group article that the three formation division is old hat now! cheers Geopersona (talk) 14:46, 17 February 2012 (UTC)
 * I think different authors have understood the term 'formation' here in different ways. Confusingly the word is used by geologists in a tightly defined way to describe a particular association of rock strata whih is mappable across a tract of country - but is also used more generally by non-specialists to apply (in the term 'rock formation') to physical features which consist partly or wholly of rock. The collection of chalk downlands through southern and eastern England may be thought of as a rock formation in this second sense but it is not a formation in the first. Indeed in modern times the chalk responsible for this collection of landforms is fitted to the Chalk Group, itself divided into two 'sub-groups' which are then further divided into formations in the first sense of the term (still follow me?). I think there is probably justification for having an article on the assemblage of chalk landforms in S and E England but, to reduce confusion, it should not include the word 'formation' in its title. Perhaps this article, after suitable editing, could be re-named 'Chalk landforms of England' or something similar? cheers Geopersona (talk) 06:29, 20 February 2012 (UTC)
 * Chalklands of England? Pterre (talk) 09:12, 20 February 2012 (UTC)

I think that to reform/rename in this way could produce a really interesting little geographical article, one which could compare and contrast how the various chalk landscapes present themselves in the landscape (they're not all the same, obviously) and which also could help educate people that the chalk downs of area are just part of a wider assemblage. However care would be needed to avoid too much replication, bearing in mind that each individual range of chalk hills (well, most of them) already have their own articles, and there is already a downland article. I can see a suite of related articles: Obviously these articles would have a lot of interwiki linking between them. At the moment I'm undecided on what would be the best title for the proposed renamed article, though I agree that 'formation' shouldn't be in the title. PaleCloudedWhite (talk) 08:54, 21 February 2012 (UTC)
 * Chalk - the rock
 * Chalk Group - the geological unit containing the rock
 * 'Chalk landforms of England' (or whatever title is used) - how the geological unit expresses itself in the landscape, explaining amongst other things why, for example, the North Downs have their scarp face facing the South Downs, or why Salisbury Plain is a broad plateau and in that respect unlike the Purbeck Hills.
 * 'Range of chalk hills X' - descriptively geographical articles on each range of hills, going into more local detail about particular hills and valleys than the above article
 * Downland - article describing what 'downland' is in an ecological/biological/agricultural/habitat kind of way (with mention of how/why it is formed)

Proposed merge to Downland
As this article has remained mostly unchanged since the earlier discussion in 2012, I propose that, at least for now, this article is merged with the Downland article, with which it substantially overlaps. Mikenorton (talk) 14:52, 30 July 2020 (UTC)
 * I would support that proposal. Geopersona (talk) 15:39, 30 July 2020 (UTC)
 * Support. Thank you for making this proposal. It would seem to me that most of the geological content of this article is covered in the Chalk Group article and that the geographical content is better included with the more biologically focused Downland article. One of my frustrations with Wikipedia is that there is a tendency over time for large topics to be split into ever smaller stubs (which are then never improved). This fragmentation neither succeeds in helping the 'specialist' (who needs more detail) nor the 'lay person' (who might find a broader overview more useful). The myriad of articles on chalk, chalk downland, the Chalk Group, North Downs, South Downs etc is a classic example and just confuses rather than clarifies. Mertbiol (talk) 10:23, 2 August 2020 (UTC)
 * Support. The first sentence of this article includes a wikilink for the article's subject that redirects to another article, which is hardly supportive of the subject's notability (as a stand-alone article). GeoWriter (talk) 11:57, 3 August 2020 (UTC)

✅ - I would be grateful for suggestions on how to improve the article further at Talk:Downland. Mikenorton (talk) 10:15, 11 October 2020 (UTC)