User:MadisonKnowlton/sandbox

Evaluating Content
While the article begins with information about the lysocline, it very quickly devolves into providing more information about the carbonate compensation depth (CCD) instead. There is very little information about the lysocline, where it could be found, how it is in different oceans, or even enough basic information to explain what it is. The article also ends abruptly after more discussion about the CCD, leaving readers with no true understanding of what the lysocline is or its importance. The article includes links to helpful definitions, but only links to a few other articles, providing some information about the components of the lysocline. More scientific information needs to be included, as even in the article it explains things as being “more complex”, yet does not provide the more complex information. Overall, the article needs a great amount of editing.

Evaluating Tone
The article is neutral, providing only scientific facts with no position or viewpoints displayed.

Evaluating Sources
The article only includes one source, cited multiple times. The source was written in 1991, however, the article from the website the source came from claims to have been last updated on Jun 2, 2019. The source is an open oceanography textbook website, and does not provide vast information on the topic either, but it does support the facts presented in the article. The source is neutral as well, simply providing scientific facts on the lysocline and the CCD.

Evaluating the Talk Page
The article is part of the WikiProject “Oceans” to improve coverage of oceanography on Wikipedia, as well as the WikiProject “Limnology and Oceanography”. However, the article is ranked as “Stub-Class” on the quality scale, meaning it includes only very basic information about the topic, and “low-importance” on the project’s importance scale. There are some conversations taking place to improve the verbiage of the article and some debates over the correctness of the content. The most recent comments on the article were in 2015 about encouraging a more clear description about a certain process included in the article. The article is rated very poorly.

Lysocline
The lysocline is the depth in the ocean dependent upon the calciate saturation depth, usually around 3.5 km, below which the rate of dissolution of calcite increases dramatically because of a pressure effect. While the lyscoline is the upper bound of this transition zone of calcite saturation, the compensation depth is the lower bound of this zone.

CaCO₃ content in sediment varies with different depths of the ocean, spanned by levels of separation known as the transition zone. In the mid-depth area of the ocean, sediments are rich in CaCO₃, content values reaching 85-95%. This area is then spanned hundred meters by the transition zone, ending in the abyssal depths with 0% concentration. The lysocline is the upper bound of the transition zone, where amounts of CaCO₃ content begins to noticeably drop from the mid-depth 85-95% sediment. The CaCO₃ content drops to 10% concentration at the lower bound, known as the calcite compensation depth.

Shallow marine waters are generally supersaturated in calcite, CaCO₃, because as marine organisms (which often have shells made of calcite or its polymorph, aragonite) die, they tend to fall downwards without dissolving. As depth and pressure increases within the water column, calcite solubility increases, causing supersaturated water above the saturation depth, allowing for preservation and burial of CaCO₃ on the seafloor. However, this created undersaturated seawater below the saturation depth, preventing CaCO₃ burial on the sea floor as the shells start to dissolve.

The equation Ω = Ca₂+ + CO₃−2/K'sp expresses the CaCO₃ saturation state of seawater. The calcite saturation horizon is where Ω =1; dissolution proceeds slowly below this depth. The lysocline is the depth that this dissolution impacts is again noteable, also known as the inflection point with sedimentary CaCO₃ versus various water depths.

Calcite Compensation Depth
The calcite compensation depth (CCD) occurs at the depth that the rate of calcite to the sediments is balanced with the dissolution flux, the depth at which the CaCO₃ content are values 2-10%. Hence, the lysocline and CCD are not equivalent. The lysocline and compensation depth occur at greater depths in the Atlantic (5000–6000 m) than in the Pacific (4000 – 5000 m), and at greater depths in equatorial regions than in polar regions.

The depth of the CCD varies as a function of the chemical composition of the seawater and its temperature. Specifically, it is the deep waters that are undersaturated with calcium carbonate primarily because its solubility increases strongly with increasing pressure and salinity and decreasing temperature. As the atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide continues to increase, the CCD can be expected to decrease in depth, as the ocean's acidity rises.