User talk:Appletree4life/Chemocline
I have completed peer reviewing your draft! Marythemuffinlady (talk) 23:56, 26 March 2021 (UTC)Marythemuffinlady
The article on "Chemocline" is updated very well, but in the last parts case studies are presented. Instead the concepts should be generalized for common audience.
Rajashree.bini06 (talk) 10:49, 14 April 2021 (UTC)
External Reviews[edit]
Hi Appletree4life - My name is Jolie, and I'm the Project Coordinator for the WikiProject Limnology & Oceanography team. One of your external reviewers for your article on the chemocline doesn't have a Wikipedia account, so I'm posting the review below on your reviewer's behalf. If you have any questions about your review, or would like to clarify anything, please feel free to post your questions to my talk page so I can pass them along to your reviewers. Thanks, and all the best as you wrap up your Wikipedia editing assignment!
EXTERNAL REVIEW - Your reviewer is a post-doctoral researcher in biogeochemistry of inland waters (carbon and nutrient cycling and physical limnology), who writes:
First I would like to congratulate the student for their effort on the assignment, which is not an easy task. I was particularly impressed by the detailed literature review done. Here are some comments to help further improve the Wiki page:
- It would be beneficial to structure the page into a lead section (1-2 sentences giving a definition of a chemocline) and 2 subsections (one on the formation of chemoclines and another on the effect of chemoclines on the microbial community living in a water body).
- While there is a lot of information on the microbial aspect of a chemocline, some explanation is missing concerning the formation and dissipation of a chemocline. For instance, it should be mentioned that chemoclines occur mostly in water bodies that are stratified (by a thermal or a density stratification), and that they tend to dissipate when mixing of the water masses occur. Thus, it would be good to mention that the existence and depth of the chemocline can vary in time (seasonally) within a water body (in a dimictic or polymictic lake for example). This explanation could be accompanied by a brief definition of the mixolimnion and monimolimnion which are undefined technical terms used later in the paragraph.
- The explanation about the role of microbes in the formation of the chemocline could be improved and presented earlier in the paragraph (or in the section about chemocline formation like suggested above). Here is a train of thought to follow for this explanation: the light gradient creates not only a thermal stratification but also a separation between photic and aphotic water layers. This promotes photosynthetic activity in the photic zone while in the aphotic zone, the microbial decomposition of sinking organic matter consumes the oxygen in this deeper layer. This oxygen consumption creates an oxygen gradient (oxic to anoxic) on top of the light gradient, and this constrains different types of microbes in different water layers depending on their tolerance to light and oxygen. The onset of an oxycline, combined with the different microbial use of chemical compounds vertically, favors the creation of chemical gradients (i.e. chemocline).
- Overall, the text on the microbial interactions in the chemocline describe the details of the literature read. While this information is interesting, it is too detailed and probably inaccessible to most readers of Wikipedia. I suggest synthetizing and simplifying the presentation of these findings. For instance, in the Mahoney Lake study, the useful information for a wider audience could be distilled into 2 simple messages: microbial communities differ vertically due to a light gradient, and the different types of microbes interact with each other within the chemocline gradient through the by-product they produce. This is the main message for several of the studies cited, so these citations could be regrouped, and examples of specific studies given in a briefer way.