User:Mitchell11998/sandbox

Article Evaluation

The article that is being evaluated is Environmental Studies.

Evaluating Content

Everything in the article is relevant to the article topic with no distractions. The information could possibly be out of date as the last date to be mentioned in the article was in 2011. To improve this article, there should be more sources and more relevant information to do with the mentioned associations related to environmental studies.

The article is neutral and there are no specific claims that are biased toward a particular side. There are also no viewpoints that are either over or underrepresented in the article.

All of the links for the citations work but for some references an academic account is needed to be able to access the full articles. Most of the references came from college websites and are reliable neutral sources. However, some are from personal association websites, which may contain biased information in the website.

Talk Page

There are some conversations on adding more detailed information there were also a few minor changes that were discussed about in the talk page. This article is rated as stub and high by WikiProject Environment. It has been rated as stub-class by WikiProject Education, and has been rated as start-class by WikiProject Universities. In class we didn't go into detail about the history of environmental studies and how there are associations related to this field of study.

Environmental studies

Week 4 Article Selection

Article 1- Arctic front

The article's content is relevant to the topic throughout the article. It is written neutrally throughout the article. There are two citations used in this article and one of them directs the reader to a page that does not exist.

Article 2- Ice–albedo feedback

This article's content is relevant to the topic throughout the article. It is written neutrally. Not all claims in this article have a citation. The citation that is used in this article is from a reliable source. This article could use better sources to help explain the ice-albedo feedback loop. This article is also very short and is missing a lot of information.

Article 3- Interception (water)

The content in this article is all relevant to the topic and the content is all neutrally written. Not all claims in the article have a citation and the citations used in text do not match the references. This article could include better references to give more detailed information about this topic.

Peer Review

Peer review written on KHorton98/sandbox

Hi, so far your draft is looking really good and I think the section you chose to write about, being what the future holds for heat waves, is really interesting! I like that throughout your draft you use various external links so the reader is able to connect ideas and see how different topics relate to heat waves. Something that might help improve your draft is rewording the second sentence in the first paragraph. I liked that you linked the future of heat waves to past events, however, it is worded a little awkward. Another thing that stood out to me was the first and second sentences in the second paragraph about carbon uptake. They do not seem to flow nicely and maybe could be reworded and put into one sentence. Another few things I wanted to mention was that you were able to find good reliable sources and you were able to maintain a neutral point of view throughout your draft. Overall, your draft seems really good and I hope you find my suggestions helpful!

Peer review written on Coadm001/sandbox

Hi, your draft is really well written and very informative. I like your use of various external links, which allow the reader to get a better understanding of the topic and further explore it. Something I noticed in the introduction paragraph is that in the third sentence, “infiltration” is capitalized while two sentences later it is not. I’m not sure if that was a typo or if it should be capitalized. Something else that might help make your article more informative is adding visual aids. This will help the reader to have a better understanding of the content. Overall, I think you did a very good job with your draft and I hope my suggestions were helpful to you!

Reflective Essay

During the past few months working through this assignment, I learned a lot about the process of how a Wikipedia article is created. There is this misconception around Wikipedia articles that they are a very unreliable source and teachers and professors often advise against using them. Up until now I believed that and thought that a large portion of the information was incorrect. However, thanks to this assignment, I learned that the process to add information is a specific process and changes often have to be agreed upon in the community. This community for the most part is made of people who want to ensure that only credible and informative articles are created and will help edit if necessary.

This is unlike any other assignment I have worked on in the past, as it is not all my work. I am contributing to an existing article and have to add to it with information that I feel is missing and would add to the article as a whole. This is a very helpful aspect that people in the Wikipedia community are able to contribute to other articles to ensure that the article presents the most accurate and precise information relating to a specific topic. Ensuring that Wikipedia articles are written to the highest standard possible is extremely helpful for people doing research for an assignment or just for their own personal curiosity. These articles can help summarize scientific journal articles and make it easy to understand for the average person without sacrificing facts.

I was able to contribute to multiple articles in various ways. For an article on water interception, I was able to add a missing citation that I felt needed to be there. For an article on ice-albedo feedback, I made a few punctuation changes as well as changed the structure of a few sentences. The article that I ultimately did my major edit on was again the ice-albedo feedback one. I felt it was not too informative and lacked some important information that could give readers a better understanding of the topic. I decided to add a section on how climate is affected by the ice-albedo feedback loop.

          During this assignment, I did not receive any feedback from my peers about my topic. I did however give feedback to two of my peers. The fact that members of the Wikipedia community can give their input and opinions on drafts is very helpful with ensuring that you are able to produce an informative and interesting article. Some of the edits I suggested in my peer reviews were to add more external links to help link concepts with other Wikipedia articles. I also suggested adding more images to some drafts to allow the reader to have visual aids to help explain the topic better.

           Overall, this was a very interesting assignment and I found it to be a valuable experience to see the process of how a Wikipedia article is fabricated and edited by an entire community.

Article: Ice-albedo feedback

Ice–albedo feedback

Impacts on Climate due to the ice-albedo feedback.

The ice-albedo feedback plays a big role in regulating the climate of the Earth. After fresh Snow, ice is the most reflective natural surface and covers an approximate 10% of Earth’s surface. With such a large surface area, its Albedo can have a large influence on the amount of solar radiation that is absorbed by the surface of the Earth. There are many initial factors that can change the surface climate, but preceding that, the ice-albedo feedback can further enhance that change, continuing to alter the climate.  Initial changes could be caused from various factors like changes in Weathering rates or level of volcanic activity. Events like these could lead to the overall temperature of the Earth to experience a net increase or decrease in temperature. This then causes the global ice sheets around the planet to grow or shrink accordingly.

If global cooling were to be initiated by a natural phenomenon, this would lead to more sea ice forming and accumulating as well as glaciers expanding. With an increased surface area of ice around the planet, this would lead to a larger amount of Earth’s surface having a higher albedo. This would consequently lead to a reduction in the amount of solar radiation available to be absorbed by the earth leading to further cooling, adding to the feedback loop.

Contrarily, if global warming were to be initiated by certain stimuli, this would lead to an overall reduction in surface area of ice on Earth. This subsequently would cause more solar radiation to be absorbed by the earth as the land and sea that was previously covered by the ice has a lower albedo than the ice.

Current trends in the ice-albedo feedback

IPCC has predicted in their latest reported that the temperatures at the poles will increase much more rapidly compared the rest of the world. This is due to the drastic change in albedo at the poles contributing to a process known as polar amplification. Since 1978, Arctic sea ice has declined, while it has slightly increased in the Antarctic. This significant loss of sea ice in the arctic is causing the temperatures in this region to increase twice as fast compared to global temperature increase. As this temperature increase continues to climb, this will further drive the ice-albedo feedback process and continue to amplify the increase in temperature.