User:Nataliezahrebelny/sandbox

Article evaluation

I choose to review the article on acid rain. Everything in the article seems to be relevant to the topic with working citations. Although I noticed that there is a very large section on history of acid rain in the United States. This seems a bit bias since there is minuscule historical information about acid rain in other countries. Adding more historical information about acid rain in other countries would be beneficial for the reader to compare the effects of acid rain around the world. Another topic that could be beneficial to add to this article is mentioning if there is a change in pH of precipitation throughout time, as mentioned in Mineral Resources, Economics and the Environment by Stephen E Kesler and Adam C Simon, 2015. The material is not necessarily out of date although they could add some more recent topics of acid rain.

In the talk page of this article there is not much conversation going on about how to improve this page. The past comments were made about adding pictures and paraphrasing some material. This article was rated as a B class article and is mentioned in some wikiprojsects such as WikiProject Environment.

The article is similar in how it was presented in class. As mentioned in class Dr. Mungall went over wet and dry scrubbing. In the article they talk about wet scrubbing but do not seem to mention dry scrubbing.

Article Topic & Draft

My partner(Jaimeejo) and I chose to edit the page on fertilizers. This page is listed as C-Class article, therefore there is room for improvement. Our focus while working on this article is to add some more in-depth detail to complement what has already been written as well as editing sections to provide readers a more cohesive outlook on fertilizers. Although there is a lot of content already in this article, there is some information that can be updated and elaborated. By linking other topics, it will give readers a better understanding of how fertilizers work, what they are made of/for, how they are significant and other important content that may be useful to anyone reading about fertilizers. For example there is some area for adding more information on indirect and direct biological effects of fertilizers. Below are our first sources we plan to use to update this page with more extensive information.

Rough Draft
(Jaimeejo)

Everything in bold is what we are going to add the the article.

All edits will be made to the "Fertilizer" article.

Under the "Production" section:

Organic fertilizers[edit]
Main article: Organic fertilizer Compost bin for small-scale production of organic fertilizer A large commercial compost operation

“Organic fertilizers” can describe those fertilizers with an organic — biologic — origin -- that is, fertilizers derived from living or formerly living materials. Organic fertilizers can also describe commercially available and frequently packaged products that strive to follow the expectations and restrictions adopted by “organic agriculture” and ”environmentally friendly" gardening — related systems of food and plant production that significantly limit or strictly avoid the use of synthetic fertilizers and pesticides. The “organic fertilizer” products typically contain both some organic materials as well as acceptable additives such as nutritive rock powders, ground sea shells (crab, oyster, etc.), other prepared products such as seed meal or kelp, and cultivated microorganisms and derivatives.

Fertilizers of an organic origin (the first definition) include such materials as animal wastes, plant wastes from agriculture, compost, and treated sewage sludge(biosolids). Beyond manures, animal sources can include products from the slaughter of animals — bloodmeal, bone meal, feather meal, hides, hoofs, and horns all are typical components. Organically derived materials available to industry such as sewage sludge may not be acceptable components of organic farming and gardening, because of factors ranging from residual contaminants to public perception. On the other hand, marketed “organic fertilizers” may include, and promote, processed organics because the materials have consumer appeal. No matter the definition nor composition, most of these products contain less concentrated nutrients, and the nutrients are not as easily quantified. They never-the-less can offer soil-building advantages as well as be appealing to those who are trying to farm / garden more “naturally”. '''Soil organic matter content and soil biological activity are intimately linked with soul aggregation and soil structural condition such as lime applications. They are known to give short-term solutions for biological control, but there is proof that they offer long-term effects to increase soil organic matter content as well.'''

In terms of volume, peat is the most widely used packaged organic soil amendment. Since this immature form of coal, which improves the soil by aeration and absorbing water, confers no nutritional value to the plants, it is thus not a fertilizer as defined in the beginning of the article, but rather an amendment. Coir, (derived from coconut husks), bark, and sawdust when added to soil all act similarly (but not identically) to peat and are also considered organic soil amendments - or texturizers - because of their limited nutritive inputs. Some organic additives can have a reverse effect on nutrients — fresh sawdust can consume soil nutrients as it breaks down, and may lower soil pH — but these same organic texturizers (as well as compost, etc.) may increase the availability of nutrients through improved cation exchange, or through increased growth of microorganisms that in turn increase availability of certain plant nutrients. Organic fertilizers such as composts and manures may be distributed locally without going into industry production, making actual consumption more difficult to quantify.

For fuller discussion, see the article on organic fertilizers.

Under the "Environment Effects" heading of the Fertilizer article:
 * Use these sentences as an intro to the "Environment Effects" heading. Use of fertilizers are beneficial in providing nutrients to plants although they have some negative environmental effects. The large growing consumption of fertilizers can effect soil, surface water, and groundwater due to dispersion of mineral use . It is important to be aware of the environmental effects in order to use them sparingly.
 * Phosphorus and nitrogen fertilizers when commonly used have major environmental effects. This is due to high rainfalls causing the fertilizers to be washed into waterways .


 * Adding from Gomiero et al., 2011 article; we could add another subtitle that discusses conventional vs. organic agriculture and how those two "agricultural management practices" will have various impacts to the environment. For example, under organic agriculture, nitrogen leaching could be mentioned, among many other topics mentioned in this journal article. Organic agriculture refers to the farming systems that encourage soil fertility by using local resources to maximize efficiency. This does not include any agrochemicals or use of Genetic Modified Organisms (GMO), or any synthetic compounds for food additives. Conventional agriculture uses all the components that Organic agriculture does not use.

Under the "Regulation section of "Environmental Effects of the Fertilizer article"


 * We will add information about China using a new method of reducing fertilizer use by increasing farm sizes.
 * In China, there have been regulations implemented by the government that want to control N fertilizers being used in farming. In 2008, Chinese governments have started to partially withdraw fertilizer subsidies, which also include contributions to fertilizer transportation, electricity and natural gas use in the industry. Because of this, professional farmers who run large-scale farms have already used less fertilizers since then under the fertilizer prices went up. If large-scale farms keep reducing their use of fertilizer subsidies, they have no choice but to optimize the fertilizer they have which would therefore gain an increase in both grain yield and profit.

Under the "Statistics" heading of the Fertilizer article:
 * We would like to expand this heading with some updated information on mineral value and growth in production.
 * Recently nitrogen fertilizers have plateaued in most developed countries. China although has become the largest producer and consumer of nitrogen fertilizers . Africa has little reliance on nitrogen fertilizers . Agricultural and chemical minerals are very important in industrial use of fertilizers, which is valued at approximately $200 billion . Nitrogen has a significant impact in the global mineral use, followed by potash and phosphate. The production of nitrogen has drastically increased since the 1960s. Phosphate and potash have increased in price since the 1960s, which is larger than the consumer price index . Potash is produced in Canada, Russia and Belarus, together making up over half of the world production . Potash production in Canada rose in 2017 and 2018 by 18.6% .Conservative estimates report 30 to 50% of crop yields are attributed to natural or synthetic commercial fertilizer. Fertilizer consumption has surpassed the amount of farmland in the United States . Global market value is likely to rise to more than US$185 billion until 2019. The European fertilizer market will grow to earn revenues of approx. €15.3 billion in 2018. Data on the fertilizer consumption per hectare arable land in 2012 are published by The World Bank. For the diagram below values of the European Union (EU) countries have been extracted and are presented as kilograms per hectare (pounds per acre). The total consumption of fertilizer in the EU is 15.9 million tons for 105 million hectare arable land area (or 107 million hectare arable land according to another estimate). This figure equates to 151 kg of fertilizers consumed per ha arable land on average for the EU countries.



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