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Archive 1 |
The map should also show political boundaries. It is difficult to get a decent idea of where, in a human sense, the Great Basin is from the current map. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 68.6.59.166 ( talk • contribs) .
The animals listed as uncommon are actually quite common. Pronghorn antelope are quite common in my area as are mule deer. I acutally live in the Great Basin and this statement needs to be changed to present and commonly seen. I know that people don't like to be edited, but if you need a citation I am glad to provide several.
I am not a biologist, but it seems that grouping pronghorn, mule deer, and elk (wapiti) together with bighorn sheep and mountain lions as saying "present but uncommon" is slightly inaccurate. In my experience, these animals are fairly regularly encountered by humans (particularly mule deer). Bighorns have a much smaller range of habitat than these species, and mountain lions are predators, so they are necessarily smaller populations. Perhaps there is a better way of wording this or grouping them together? 155.97.232.72 00:35, 10 October 2006 (UTC)
Judging by the map (I'm using Widows Live Local), the Black Rock Desert doesn't extend into Oregon. Perhaps its drainage basin does? Does someone have a citation for this? If true I'd like to add the Black Rock Desert to the Deserts of Oregon category. Thanks. Katr67 20:08, 29 March 2007 (UTC)
A large alluvial fan where the Kings River exits the Sierra Nevada foothills and reaches the flat floor of the San Joaquin Valley forms a low divide where water can flow north to the San Joaquin River and ultimately to the Pacific, or south to the Tulare Basin which had several interconnected terminal lakes (Tulare, Buena Vista, Kern and Goose) before manmade irrigation projects appropriated virtually all water flowing in from surrounding mountains. Although the Tulare Basin is not conventionally included in hydrographic Great Basin, it is contiguous with it and seems to fit the definition.
West of the Tulare Basin in the coastal "foothills" a smaller basin called the Carrizo Plain also has a closed drainage system. 76.80.9.100 17:22, 23 April 2007 (UTC)
The hydrographic Great Basin includes most of the Mojave Desert south of the Great Basin Desert as far as the Transverse Ranges of California. South of these ranges the hydrographic Great Basin continues into the lower, hotter Sonoran Desert, crossing into Mexico south of the Salton Sea.
However in discussions of flora and fauna, the article limits itself to organisms found in the Great Basin Desert, ignoring those found in the Mojave and Sonoran Desert sections of the hydrographic Great Basin. Would it be better to post a separate Great Basin Desert article and refer readers to the Mojave and Sonoran articles? 76.80.9.100 17:29, 23 April 2007 (UTC)
Remove the following:
as unsourced and speculative. May be valid, but if so source it. Vsmith ( talk) 01:08, 22 May 2009 (UTC)
Do you consider the sources in Walker Lane adequate? -- JWB ( talk) 05:48, 23 May 2009 (UTC)
The entire Great Basin article seems to suffer from confusion regarding exactly what is in the Great Basin and what isn't, geographically. Other discussions here have noted that the Great Basin itself includes land from Oregon to Mexico, while much of the article focuses exclusively on Utah and Nevada. Those two states contain nearly all of the Great Basin Desert but not the entire Great Basin region. Solutions potentially require major rewrites. The information here may need to be either split between the Great Basin and Great Basin Desert articles, or combined into one. It seems to me that combining the articles would be the most elegant solution. Thoughts? Roundelmike ( talk) 23:12, 22 October 2010 (UTC)
I removed the section about the USGS Great Basin HUC ( Hydrologic Unit Code) Region's Subregions because everything in it was about the USGS HUC California Region rather than the Great Basin Region. Here is a map of the 21 USGS HUC Regions. The Great Basin Region's HUC number is 16. The California Region HUC is 18 (mouse over or click and see each Region's Subregions). A text source is this USGS HUC info page. It lists "Region 16 Great Basin Region", "Region 18 California Region", and "Region 17 Pacific Northwest Region".
Unfortunately the USGS uses the term "Great Basin" for both its HUC Region 16 and in a more general sense. So despite Region 16 being the Great Basin Region under the USGS HUC system, there are HUC Subregions in other Regions that the USGS describes using the term "Great Basin". For example, in the Pacific Northwest Region (HUC 17) there is a Subregion 1712 called "Oregon closed basins". The USGS confusingly describes this subregion: "The drainage of the Great Basin that discharges into the state of Oregon." The USGS is using the term Great Basin here in the general sense of all closed basins in the western US. They are not saying that waters from the HUC 16 Great Basin Region drain into HUC 17 Pacific Northwest Region.
In short, the USGS uses the term Great Basin in two very different ways. If pages are to describe things in terms of HUCs, care needs to be taken to make sure the meaning of HUC names is kept distinct from other meanings of the same names. The closed basins of Oregon may be part of the Great Basin in the general sense of the term, but they are not part of HUC 16, Great Basin Region.
Likewise, the USGS Subregion 1803, "Tulare-Buena Vista Lakes", is part of the USGS California Region, not the Great Basin Region. I'm not sure California's Kings River, San Joaquin River, and so on, are even considered part of the Great Basin in the general, non-HUC sense. In any case, one should take care not to confuse the technical HUC term with the general term, Great Basin. They are not equivalent. Pfly ( talk) 10:26, 3 November 2010 (UTC)
I think this page is getting to have enough photos. The picture of the rocky outcropping didn't really tell the reader anything about the Great Basin – there are rocky outcroppings everywhere. Other photos do show landscapes fairly well, but it's near the point where enough's enough.
As for geography of the Great Basin, I would recommend not removing Lancaster and Palmdale, which are in the Great Basin. Remember, the Great Basin extends into Mexico and Oregon. It's not just a Utah/Nevada thing. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by MojaveNC ( talk • contribs) 12:13, 6 February 2007 (UTC).
I believe that Sevier Lake and the "Little Salt Lake" are one and the same. Wikipedia has a Sevier Lake article but not a Little Salt Lake article. My belief is based on a driving trip where the map we used said "Little Salt Lake" but signs on the road said "Sevier Lake". 24.27.31.170 ( talk) 18:25, 11 August 2011 (UTC) Eric
There seem to be a number of stubby articles that are about differing definitions of the Great Basin: hydrological,geographical, ecological. In my opinion, none of these has enough material to yet stand on their own. I think it would be a service to our readers to merge them all here, providing one place to discuss the differing definitions. What do other editors think? — hike395 ( talk) 05:54, 16 August 2011 (UTC)
Keep seperate articles.i just finished a summer internship in the southern Sierra Nevada area of the Great Basin before my senior year. After seeing the message at the top of Great Basin montane forest, I saw this recommendation to merge the different notable topics and thought I'd try to post (hopefully it show up OK, I'm not sure of the bold html code for the first word, and how do you indent?) These are all different topics and are notable in their own right, so they should be separate articles, right? The guy's reasoning about the United States article being justification for deleting subarticles doesn't seem right --is that recommendation claiming that the main article United States' subarticles United States federal government, United States territories, United States ecology, etc. all be merged together? Since they are distinct and notable topics, that seems absurd and merging all the articles that happen to be namesaks of the Great Basin would be even more absurd. Oh, and the area I worked was on the west Sierra slope and was also in the Great Basin (i.e., part of the large area not in the Pacific Watershed), north/west of the Sierra Crest. Should there be an article on the Sierra Nevada ecology of the Great Basin to cover the large overlaping sections that are in the area common to the topo and the hydro landforms? I can write the first version and, if its as simple as posting like this seems to be, can upload it. BTW, the Great Basin article needs to identify the overflow points into the Pacific Watershed (rare as with rain in a desert). There's much more of other notable info missing that's n/a to the Great Basin sub articles recommended for deletion, but with the extensive contention associated with the main article (the posts herein seem mostly ranting with false rationale for keeping), I'll wait before posting the improvements which means don't hold your breath (homework & exams). Also, why did the one guy claim the issue isn't whether the sub-articles are notable -- I thought I read that seperate articles are to be for notable topics, only--and notable subtopics are specifically supposted to be split out so the reader can just use the hyperlink if they want to read the distinct info? and not have to look past extensive sub-topic info to get to the other info or link to info he wants to see? ~ — Preceding unsigned comment added by 64.134.151.58 ( talk • contribs) 18:12, 1 October 2011
Consider this a Support The problem is that there are 3 different ecosystem classification schemes plus the similar United States physiographic regions and folks have been making separate articles using the terminology for each of the respective schemes. Really we should have a single article on the geographic feature and it could discuss the various definitions rather than a separate article for each definition. In the case of the Great Basin I could see this potentially spun out as an Ecology of the Great Basin article if it got too long, but that would still be a lot better than the current mish-mash. Kmusser ( talk) 00:05, 17 August 2011 (UTC)
Comments I'm not sure what the best approach is. There's definitely something to be said for merging the various regional delineation schemes (drainage basin, physiographic region, ecoregion, etc) into a single general purpose article. On the other hand, there are a few things that bug me about going that way. One is categories. Our Great Basin page is in the categories Category:Drainage basins of North America and Category:Endorheic basins of the United States. Its lead clearly defines it in terms of drainage (as does Kmusser's excellent map). But most definitions of the "Great Basin Desert" include large areas outside the endorheic Great Basin, like the Snake River Plain, Columbia Plateau, etc. A fairly common description of North American deserts lists four: the Great Basin, Mojave, Sonora, and Chihuahua deserts. Sometimes the Painted Desert is included in the Great Basin Desert. (some sources: [2], [3], [4], [5], [6], [7]). This Great Basin Desert is definitely not a drainage basin, endorheic or otherwise. So perhaps it is better to keep the pages separate. It is certainly possible to make good standalone pages specifically about ecoregions, physiographic regions, etc. Columbia Plateau (ecoregion), for example. Compare with the more general page Columbia Plateau. Our Great Basin Desert page currently seems like a rather confused mess, but it could be improved. Furthermore, the Great Basin, defined as an "area of contiguous endorheic watersheds", includes non-desert areas (such as the forests classified as Great Basin montane forest). So if we made a consolidated page, would we include it in categories and lists of deserts, drainage basins, physiographic regions, ecoregions, and so on? Seems potentially confusing.
On the other other hand, Encyclopedia Britannica equates "Great Basin" and "Great Basin Desert", [8]. But Britannica differs from our Great Basin page in being about the desert and not the drainage basin: it explicitly excludes the Mojave and Sonora deserts from the Great Basin. On this page, [9], Britannica calls the Great Basin "physiographic", and that it includes the Snake River Plain. If we go for a consolidated approach, perhaps Britannica's style could be a model—they describe the Great Basin in physiographic and ecological terms, and mention its mostly internal drainage, but don't define the region in terms of drainage. Anyway, I'm not sure. Just some food for thought. If these pages are merged, the merged page should be substantially rewritten, at least. Pfly ( talk) 01:04, 28 August 2011 (UTC)
It doesn't sound like there is a lot of full support for the merge. I interpret the discussion above as more of a consensus around cleaning up and strengthening the Great Basin article. Great Basin Desert and Ecology of the Great Basin could be good, but are controversial. I'll remove the merge tags. Let's collectively work on improving these articles. — hike395 ( talk) 16:16, 19 September 2011 (UTC)
The article currently states that the Great Basin's largest metropolitan areas are Salt Lake City and Reno. So what happened to Mexicali, which is bigger than Reno? Is it not included in the definition of the Great Basin? Backspace ( talk) 20:14, 24 June 2012 (UTC)
This article needs to explain, in one sentence at the beginning, what the Great Basin IS. There's a great deal of useful information, but no real definition. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 96.242.86.87 ( talk) 17:03, 5 January 2013 (UTC)
The opening paragraph states Mount Whitney is part of the Great Basin. US Government maps don't show that. See: http://nationalatlas.gov/streamer/Streamer/streamer.html
18:44, 18 July 2013 (UTC)