User:Jlee4199/sandbox

GIS in environmental contamination


 * 1) Is everything in the article relevant to the topic? Did anything distract you? - Yes, I thought that everything was relevant to GIS and how it is incorporated to archaeology. No, nothing in particular distracted me from the content.
 * 2) Is there anything information out of date? Is there anything that should be added? No, I did not see there was anything information out of date, however, there are plenty of resources of GIS on GIS websites that go into very much detail about how GIS is used for many fields. I think that there is content missing given the amount of recent information being published about GIS.
 * 3) What could be improved? - the use of more resources as explained above, as well as the in text citations.

Article Selection
I chose to add "Remote Sensing Application" to the article of GIS in environmental contamination.

GIS in environmental contamination
Introduction to Remote Sensing

Remote Sensing is a closely related field to GIS that involves may of the same applications. Remote sensing is defined as the scanning of the Earth by satellite or high-flying aircraft in order to obtain information about it ("What is remote sensing?," n.d.). Information is obtained by reflection of electromagnetic radiation from the earth to a sensor, which records the quantitative reflection amounts that can be further processed to be used in many different fields of application.

Contamination Detection

Different features on Earth have different chemical properties which promotes them to reflect light differently from one another. For example, vegetation reflects highly in the infrared wavelengths, while bare earth reflects little infrared radiation. This concept is called a spectral signature. Spectral signatures allow viewers of recorded satellite data to classify certain objects on an image based upon which wavelength of the EM spectrum is being reflected, at what magnitude ("Eduspace EN - Home - Spectral signatures," 2009).

This is useful in detection of contamination. Scientists are able to use Remote Sensing data to track contamination leaching because contaminants pertain to their own chemical properties. This allows energy to be reflected in a specific way, that is much different than the surrounding environment, such as soil.

Reflective Essay
Critiquing articles

During my Wikipedia article evaluation, I learned that editing is much harder than they appear to be. In order to reliability evaluate an article, you have to change your viewpoint to consider all aspects of the content. Just because something is wrong or invalid to you, does not necessarily mean that the actual content is wrong. You really have to set aside your personal views and look at what is being discussed in a neutral standpoint. I approached critiquing the article I selected for this assignment by doing this exact method. I set aside what I am biased towards and critiqued the article based on true facts that I knew.

I decided what to add to the article that I chose first writing down any questions that I had while reading the article, and then making comments based upon what I thought could use more clarity.

Peer Review

           Yes, my class did peer reviewing. For my peer reviewing process I would start with picking articles that I had a fair amount of background knowledge on, so that I wouldn’t have to learn all new content. I then read the content to get a feel for what was being discussed. I would then read it again, but this time I would read it from an editor’s viewpoint, rather than a reader’s standpoint. I made some changes on what wording was slightly confusing or misleading, as well as suggested things that could be added or things that sounded redundant.

Feedback

I unfortunately did not receive any feedback from my Wiki editors.

Wikipedia Generally

In a general term, the main thing that I took away from from contributing to wiki was that in order for an article to be considered a reliable source, many people have to have had added input to the subject of interest, and it is a very lengthy process. This being said, I also learned that Wikipedia is sometimes a good source to find information on a certain topic. If that specific page that you are retrieving information from has many authors, and edits, then it could very well be considered as a reliable source.

This assignment is a lot more multi-sided than most of the other assignments that I have done in the past. This assignment really allows authors to voice their option, as well as state hard facts from multiple standpoints. With other assignments, you are often told to pick one side preventing other factual information from other viewpoints to be discredited.