User:Emmadwilson/sandbox

Article Evaluation
I am reviewing the article Sink (geography). Everything in the article is relevant to the topic of the article. Nothing seems to be out of date or missing. The scientific information, however, is not able to be easily understood by the average person, which is distracting. There is a lot of scientific jargon that cannot be followed without learning the meanings of several words. There are links to other wikipedia pages explaining some of the terms.

The article's tone is neutral, without any bias toward a particular side.

The article only has one source and needs more sources in order to become more reliable.

In the talk page, one topic that has been brought up is the density of scientific jargon and how the article needs to be cleaned up in order to be read by people without a scientific background.

Possible Citations
Here are some possible citations to add to the article:

Briere, Peter R. (2000) "Playa, playa lake, sabkha: Proposed definitions for old terms". Journal of Arid Environments. 45(1): 1-7. https://doi.org/10.1006/jare.2000.0633

Osterkamp, W. R.; Wood, Warren W. (1987) "Playa-lake basins on the Southern High Plains of Texas and New Mexico: Part I. Hydrologic, geomorphic, and geologic evidence for their development". The Geological Society of America Bulletin. 99(2): 215-223. https://doi.org/10.1130/0016-7606(1987)99&#x3C;215:PBOTSH&#x3E;2.0.CO;2

Osterkamp, W. R.; Wood, Warren W. (1987) "Playa-lake basins on the Southern High Plains of Texas and New Mexico: Part II. A hydrologic model and mass-balance arguments for their development". The Geological Society of America Bulletin. 99(2): 224-230. https://doi.org/10.1130/0016-7606(1987)99&#x3C;224:PBOTSH&#x3E;2.0.CO;2

Yapiyev, Vadim; Sagintayev, Zhanay; Inglezakis, Vassilis J.; Samarkhanov, Kanat; Verhoef, Anne. (2017). "Essentials of Endorheic Basins and Lakes: A Review in the Context of Current and Future Water Resource Management and Mitigation Activities in Central Asia". Water. 9(10): 798. https://doi.org/10.3390/w9100798

Article Draft
Here is my draft for the Sink (geography) article. Also, I think changing the name of the article to "Endorheic lake" will more accurately portray what the article is about. From here on, I will be calling the "geographic sink" an "endorheic lake."

For the paragraph:

"If the sink has karstic terrain, water will sink at a higher rate than the surface evaporation, and conversely if the lakebed or sink bed has a layer of soil that is largely impervious to water (hardpan), evaporation will predominate. Since dry lakes in sinks with hardpan have little penetration, they require more severe aridity/heat to eliminate collected water at a comparable rate as for a similar sink with appreciable penetration."

This section is very wordy with a lot of scientific terms that are difficult to understand. I might be able to reword this part to make it more readable, but right now I am thinking of cutting it from the article.

A possible future source:

Nyberg, Björn; Gawthorpe, Robert L.; Helland-Hansen, William (2018). "The distribution of rivers to terrestrial sinks: Implications for sediment routing systems". ScienceDirect. 316: 1-23. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.geomorph.2018.05.007

Article
An endorheic lake, or sink lake, is a collection of water within an endorheic basin, or sink, with no visible outlet. Endorheic lakes are generally saline as a result of being unable to get rid of solutes left in the lake by evaporation. These lakes can be used as indicators of anthropogenic change, such as irrigation or climate change, in the areas surrounding them.

The two main ways that endorheic lakes accumulate water are through river flow into the lake (discharge) and precipitation falling into the lake. The collected water of the lake, instead of discharging, can only be lost due to either evapotranspiration or percolation (water sinking underground, e.g., to become groundwater in an aquifer). Because of this lack of an outlet, endorheic lakes are mostly salt water rather than fresh water. The salinity in the lake gradually builds up through years as water evaporates and leaves its solutes behind.

Depending on water losses, precipitation, and inflow (e.g., a spring, a tributary, or flooding), the temporal result of a lake in a sink may change. The lake could be a persistent lake, an intermittent lake, a playa lake (temporarily covered with water), or an ephemeral lake, which completely disappears (e. g. by evaporation) before reappearing in wetter seasons. These terms (playa, ephemeral lake, etc.) are sometimes used interchangeably, but there has been activity tending towards defining meanings for each term. This change would mean less confusion over the designations of different types of endorheic lakes.

Anthropogenic Effects
Many endorheic lakes exist in arid or semi-arid climates. Because these climates have limited rainfall, but also a high possibility of evaporation, endorheic lakes in these regions often experience flux in their water levels. This flux can be aggravated by anthropgenic intrusions (e.g. global warming).

In Central Asia, a large percentage of water for farming comes from surface water, like endorheic lakes, rather than precipitation. Because of the overall lack of precipitation, farming in this area can only be sustained by irrigation. Massive amounts of irrigation in agrarian Central Asia have led to the reduction in size of endorheic lakes. The Aral Sea was once the second largest endorheic lake in the world, but anthropogenic effects such as bad irrigation practices have led to this lake's drastic decrease in size.

Endorheic lakes, because of the closed nature of their systems, are sensitive to new conditions. Records of previous environmental change are preserved in lake sediments in endorheic lakes that are being affected by climate change; these natural records can give information about past climates and conditions of the lake. Research on these lake sediments could lead to these lakes becoming archives of the effects of climate change.