User:Tsilas3/sandbox

Evaluating Content
The current article does not have much information in it. There is a short introductory paragraph which gives the definition, and then introduces several advanced scientific topics. As a result, the article is full of scientific jargon, which makes it hard to read. There is also a section about salt export, but the table in that section has the dissolved load of several major rivers, not the salt export. That section could be relevant to the topic of dissolved load, but it isn't explained, and it seems to distract from the rest of the article. As a whole, this article needs a lot of work. It needs more information, it has to be presented without jargon, and it needs to be better organized.

Evaluating Tone
The article appears to be pretty neutral, but that's because there is very little information in the article to begin with.

Evaluating Sources
This article is almost entirely unsourced. The only references are to the USGS InfoBank, which appears to be where the definition is from, and I can't find what is specifically being cited in the other source. There are several major claims in the article that should have a source.

Evaluating Talk Page
The talk page is almost empty. The only discussion that happened was in 2008, and it was because the reference link was incorrect. The article is a Level 5 vital article in Earth Science. It is rated stub-class on the quality scale and mid-importance on the importance scale. It is part of the Geology and Environment WikiProjects.

Lead section
Dissolved load is the portion of a river's total sediment load that is carried in solution. It is a major contributor to the total amount of material removed from a river's drainage basin, along with suspended load and bed load. The dissolved load of a river is primarily controlled by chemical weathering, which depends on climate and weather conditions such as moisture and temperature. Dissolved load has many useful applications within the field of geology, including erosion and denudation.

Measurement Techniques
Dissolved load is typically measured by taking samples of water from a river and running various scientific tests on them. According to Grove (1972), within two days of sample collection, the pH, conductivity, and bicarbonate alkalinity of the sample were measured. Afterwards, the samples were filtered to remove any suspended sediments. Some of the samples had chloroform added to prevent growth of microorganisms, while the others had concentrated hydrochloric acid added to keep the dissolved ions from precipitating out of solution. Then, various chemical tests are applied to determine the concentration of each solute. For example, the concentrations of sodium and potassium ions are determined by flame photometer, while the calcium and magnesium ion concentrations are determined by atomic absorption spectrophotometry.

Reconstructing Past Climate
Dissolved load can provide valuable information about the rate of soil formation and other processes of chemical erosion. In particular, the mass balance between the dissolved load and solid phase is helpful in determining surface dynamics. In addition, dissolved load can be used to reconstruct the climate of the Earth in the past. This is because chemical weathering is the major contributor to the dissolved load of a stream. The chemical weathering of silicate rocks is the primary sink for carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, because atmospheric carbon dioxide is converted into carbonate rocks in the carbonate–silicate cycle. Carbon dioxide concentrations are the primary control of the greenhouse effect, which determines the temperature of the Earth.

Denudation
Denudation is the process of wearing away the top layers of Earth's landscape. Because the rate of denudation is normally too small to directly measure, it can be indirectly determined by measuring the sediment load of the streams that drain the area in question. This is possible because any rock material that passes through a certain point on a stream is guaranteed to have come from somewhere in the stream's drainage basin upstream of that point. As topographic relief increases, the dissolved load's contribution to the total stream load decreases. This is due to the fact that on steeper surfaces, rain is less likely to infiltrate the rocks. This results in less chemical weathering occurring, which decreases the dissolved load.