Talk:Great Basin Floristic Province

Ecoregion/Floristic Province confusion

This article seems to cover both the Great Basin Floristic Province, as implied by the title, but also seems to overlap into the topics of the Central Basin and Range and Northern Basin and Range ecoregions as well. Also, the map that's given defines the Great Basin Province a good deal more narrowly than I've seen elsewhere, for example, in Cronquest's North American Floristics map, which has the Great Basin extend a good ways more into Oregon and Idaho, but also even includes the Colorado Plateau within the floristic province. I think some cleanup and then expansion of this article is needed to cover this specific topic and not get bogged down in differing concepts of "Great Basin". It would also be better if the Great Basin article had a section on different definitions of Great Basin - hydrographic, physiographic, floristic, ecoregion, and indigenous culture area, which are overlapping concepts, but not entirely the same. Peter G Werner (talk) 01:32, 3 January 2015 (UTC)

Many of the Great Basin-related articles are in poor shape, with confusion between different definitions. That's been true for years (see, e.g., my merge proposal at Talk:Great Basin#Merging from 2011). Improving Great Basin as an overview article, with making the different definitions clear, sounds like an excellent plan. I'm happy to help. —hike395 (talk) 04:36, 3 January 2015 (UTC)

Me too. I just did a major edit session on Great Basin Desert, and am finding all the articles contradict one another. Lynn (SLW) (talk) 16:32, 11 July 2015 (UTC)

Also, the map is derived from the one on [this site], but changed "Great Basin Desert" to "Great Basin Province". So, I agree, the map needs to be replaced. Lynn (SLW) (talk) 12:40, 12 July 2015 (UTC)

The map was edited by User:Hike796 back in 2011, who seems to have injected original research into the map. I reverted the map back to the original USGS version. I like the edits that Lynn have made so far.

Peter's suggestion, above, is a good one: the Great Basin overview article can talk about the different definitions. It seems to be that Great Basin Desert and Great Basin Province are both about ecological entities. Wouldn't it be better to just have an ecological overview article called Ecology of the Great Basin, that subsumes both? This can be analogous to Ecology of the Rocky Mountains or Ecology of the North Cascades. Let's try to fix this up, as a collaboration.

One useful source of info is the 1990s era USGS publication on the Great Basin / Mojave region: http://www.nwrc.usgs.gov/sandt/Great-bn.pdf

Thanks! —hike395 (talk) 05:31, 13 July 2015 (UTC)

I'd agree with merging the two pages, except that I'm not sure that the "Great Basin desert" correlates with "Great Basin province". JMHO, but as a long time resident of the Great Basin, when we talk of "our" desert, we're roughly talking about the area designated on [this map]. When you go outside this area, there are some very distinct differences in the ecology, even though it may be floristically similar to a larger area. I would suggest that the Great Basin article start off with a discussion of the hydrographic Great Basin (since that's the "real" definition), then talk briefly about the floristic, ecoregion (desert), and indigenous culture areas named for the Great Basin, with Wiki links, a brief discussion of the "ecology" of the hydrographic area with wikilinks to all the ecoregions (Mojave desert, Sonoran desert, Oregon high desert, etc.) then go into more discussion of the hydrographic and physiographic aspects, since those are closely related. Lynn (SLW) (talk) 12:12, 13 July 2015 (UTC)

This page should definitely be merged with the Great Basin article. Lynn (SLW) (talk) 01:09, 14 July 2015 (UTC)

I think that the articles that have remained pitiful stubs for multiple years (e.g., Great Basin section, Great Basin Province) could be merged into the main Great Basin article, esp if you write the "various definitions" section. It would be wonderful if you could start that editing.

As for Great Basin desert: we can leave the article where it is. My plan is to expand it with ecology information, such as life zones and endangered species. I'll do that in the next few days. —hike395 (talk) 15:42, 14 July 2015 (UTC)

Later -- I went ahead and added a definition section, taken mostly verbatim from the PD NPS webpage (with suitable citation). —hike395 (talk) 16:17, 14 July 2015 (UTC)

I see that! I commented here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Great_Basin#Area Lynn (SLW) (talk) 23:20, 14 July 2015 (UTC)

User:Look2See1 reverted my redirect, so I attempted to rescue this article. User:Peter G Werner was correct -- the previous version of the article was deeply confused. I replaced it with a basic definition. Now, I happen to think that the "floristic province" concept is the opinion of Armen Takhtajan, and isn't up-to-date. And given the last 5 years of (lack of editing), this will always remain a stub. But at least the article isn't massively incorrect any more. —hike395 (talk) 07:43, 16 July 2015 (UTC)