User:Gdoman1/sandbox

Causes of the fires
Beginning in May 2004, the summer was extremely warm and wet in comparison to typical Interior Alaska summer climate Much of the rain over the summer of 2004 came during thunderstorms, which resulted in record amounts of lightning triggering many of the original fires near Fairbanks, Alaska. Wildfires are prone to develop in areas with frequent lightning strikes. After months of lightning and increased temperatures, an uncharacteristically dry August resulted in fires continuing through September.

Plagiarism
Google searched the lines "Though there were fewer fires than in 1989 when almost 1,000 were recorded, more than 6600000 acre were burned by 701 fires." and "This fire consumed over 1,700,000 acres (6,900 km2) and was the deemed to be the largest fire in the United States from 1997 to 2007." The only results found came from the wikipedia article so information was not plagiarized.

Reason for edit
There was little information in the article about how and why the fires were so extreme during the season. I feel as though this contribution gives a clearer explanation as to why there were so many fires and why they were so extreme in comparison to previous wild fire seasons in Alaska.

Article 2: 2008 Damxung earthquake
The 2008 Damxung earthquake hit the Damxung County in the Tibetan Plateau region of the People's Republic of China on October 6, 2008. The earthquake had a magnitude of 6.3 and a maximum intensity of IX on the mercalli scale. The greatest intensity was in the village of Yangying, where ten people were killed and sixty injured. The earthquake resulted from the Indian plate moving upward to collide with the Eurasian plate. In recent years, there has been an increase of activity in the Tibetan region creating stronger earthquakes, such as the 2008 Wenchaun earthquake that caused mass destruction.

Plagiarism
Many of the sources used were not reliable. I replaced the line "The Chinese state media reported that the earthquake caused 10 deaths as of October 7." with the sentence "The greatest intensity was in the village of Yangying, where ten people were killed and sixty injured. " to give more detail on where the deaths occurred and use a more reliable source.

Also, there was no source for "The 2008 Damxung earthquake hit Damxung County, Xizang (Tibet), west of Lhasa, in the People's Republic of China around 16:30 China Standard Time on October 6, 2008." I replaced the opening sentence with "The 2008 Damxung earthquake hit the Damxung County in the Tibetan Plateau region of the People's Republic of China on October 6, 2008. " in order to use a more reliable source.

The links for "Three aftershocks above magnitude 5 followed the main earthquake." did not work and I deleted this sentence as well.

Reason for edit
Information in the original article lacked reliable sources. Many of the links did not work and parts of the article were not cited. I rewrote the opening to the article and added sentences about how the earthquake formed (which plates collided) and increased activity in the Tibetan region throughout recent years to give further explanation of how the earthquake formed and why it had a fairly large magnitude.

Update on edit (as of 11/6/2016)
While attempting to edit my article based off of the feedback given, another user took away all of my edits. I was able to fix the links that were messed up and revert my article to the way it was after I edited it- but I am not sure if my edits will be taken away again.

Recent urban flooding in China
Urban flooding has recently become more frequent and severe in China.The main causes of the increase in flooding are the limited capacity of urban drainage networks, a loss of natural water bodies, and the loss of land during the urbanization of China. The flooding in Beijing resulted from these factors as well as the heaviest rainfall to hit Beijing in 60 years.

Plagiarism
Google searched the following lines:

"In the city, more than 1.6 million people were affected by the flood overall." No articles, aside from wikipedia, came up showing the same text.

"Within a day of the flooding, 56,933 people had been evacuated, while the floodwaters killed 79 people, causing at least 10 billion Yuan (US $1.6 billion) in damages and destroying at least 8,200 homes." No articles, aside from wikipedia, came up showing the same text.

"The 2012 flash floods reached levels not seen in previous years." Did not have a citation so I added an article that went into details on the records broken and destruction caused by the flood.

Many of the links used for citations were in Chinese, making it difficult to know if they were viable or not.

Reason for edit
I added a section on the urban flooding events in China around the time of the Beijing flood to add more detail about societies influence on the disturbance and the severe urban flooding China has been experiencing recently. Some of the information already in the article gave great examples of this and I put it under the section as well. I added a link to the wikipedia page for floods that contains a section on urban flooding, so that the reader would have a better understanding of what urban flooding is.