Talk:Hypoxia (environmental)

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[edit] How this page started

The creation of this page started after two suggestions that hypoxia (medical) merge with first hypoxaemia and then with oxygen depletion, which was well developed. David Ruben started a discussion on it. Ex nihil realised that there was a mess of redirects and confusion around hypoxia subjects generally, many of which were rather underdeveloped and subsequently created hypoxia (disambiguation). As part of that process a renaming of oxygen depletion seemed to clarify things a bit. The discussion text can be found at Talk:hypoxia (medical) Ex nihil 01:07, 3 July 2006 (UTC)

  • Removed the mergeto|Hypoxia (medical) as this has been a while now without any discussion. Ex nihil 08:14, 18 July 2006 (UTC)


[edit] Merge multiple hypoxic pages

The hypoxia disambiguation page currently lists the following under environmental:

In the environment:

This list might be better if it could be reduced to:

  • Hypoxia at high altitude
  • Hypoxia (environmental)

...by merging Hypoxic zone, Anoxic sea water and oxygen minimum zone into the existing hypoxia (environmental) At least two of these articles are very brief and suggest a paragraph that might belong better in an expanded Hypoxia (environmental) article. Perhaps this could be done in stages. Any views on this? Ex nihil 04:05, 2 October 2006 (UTC)

  • The Hypoxia (environmental) and oxygen minimum zone seem to be well suited to merger. But I quail at merging Anoxic sea water and Dead zone (ecology) which I do not think are the best names for those articles. My own feeling is that Anoxic sea water is really about anoxic basins, rather than the chemistry of anoxic sea water (although the two seem to be rather mixed). I admit that the article needs a great deal of work to make it Anoxic basins, but I do think that the larger, not directly chemical aspects might be drowned in a conjoined article with Hypoxia (environmental) and oxygen minimum zone. Now merging Anoxic sea water with Dead zone (ecology) might be useful, although the Dead zone (ecology) article tends to be about environmental degredation and the creation of dead zones, while the Anoxic sea water article seems to be about naturally occurring ones. Bejnar 05:21, 5 October 2006 (UTC)
  • I would oppose merging as these are all different if related subjects; the distinctions between these subjects may very well be lost. The oxygen minimum zone has in fact little to do with hypoxia as it's a natural recurring area in any ocean deep enough and not nearly as extremely oxygen deprived as the hypoxia article talks about, while for the other pages I share the objections of Bejnar above. What I would suggest to do instead, is to remake the hypoxia page, as it is the most general of the pages discussed here, into an overview page for these related but distinct concepts. --Martin Wisse 05:32, 6 October 2006 (UTC)
  • I think that a merger would not be easy, and I don't know that it would be beneficial. Whether the pages are merged or not, we'll have to be careful to make clear the distinctions between dead-zones, anoxic basins, minimal oxygen zones, &c. If everything was combined on one page, this would probably mean devoting a section to each concept, which might end up as little more than a cut-and-paste job, with each page imported to the mother article, given its own level-two header (or perhaps level-three, under a level-two header "Types of hypoxia", or something similar) and with few changes made to the text. On the plus side, the intrested reader would find all of the related information in one place, but on the other hand, the redirects could get confusing, and if any of the topics grows, it may need to be split out into its own article again. Leaving the pages separate emphasizes their differences, and prevents us from having to address the redirects, etc, that typically require updating following a merger. So, I guess I'm against the merger, but not very strongly. I'm also not clear on why high altitude hypoxia should be separated out from the aquatic forms in a page labeled environmental hypoxia. --Badger151 00:25, 7 October 2006 (UTC)
  • Please do not! My class in school is studying these concepts and they are in completely different units. Wikipedia must keep these separate so I can continue my course, thanks! --75.68.60.17 03:55, 11 December 2006 (UTC)
  • I was looking up Oxygen minimum zone because within oceanology it is a concept in itself. I do not think it should be mixed up with other kinds of hypoxiaLarsrd 22:53, 7 January 2007 (UTC)
  • The "dead zone" in the Gulf of Mexico of caused by excess nitrogen loading from the Mississippi River. Hypoxia is the scientific term for the "dead zone" and since the Gulf "dead zone" is one of the most famous hypoxia examples, it should definitely be merged with the hypoxia article.
  • The current discussion of hypoxia treats it as a form of pollution- which is fine- but this is not accurate for the oxygen minimum zones. There is evidence that these zones can change as a result of changes in physical ocean circulation as well as biology.Agnana 01:24, 4 March 2007 (UTC)

Please don't merge 'Dead Zone' with this article. The phrase 'dead zone' is becoming widely adopted in the media and among the general population as a way to refer to areas of the oceans that have this condition. I found the article by searching for 'dead zone' and would never have known to search on Hypoxia -- most people wouldn't. --Kbedell 13:02, 31 July 2007 (UTC)

A redirect from dead zone to this article would bring users to the combined article. That is normal practice when articles are merged. The goal is to avoid duplicate article text, while providing links or disambiguations from all reasonable synonyms. The reason not to combine the articles would be if the topics are really distinct. Trevor Hanson 21:23, 31 July 2007 (UTC)
  • Don't merge—cross link!... there is little sense to combining technically specific terms into ballbuster articles one might not want to peruse, whereas a small screenful or so on the specific term searched is frequently just what the doctor wanted.
    • Opine, that with the lack of support found in nine months or so, this merger discussion and tagging be closed out. // FrankB 20:51, 12 August 2007 (UTC)
      • I originated the 'merge to' and I acknlowledge the lack of consensus to go in this direction so I have removed tags from the articles. Agree on the need to cross link and coordinate. I won't atttempt it from here, I am in Dili, Timor Leste and the bandwidth is just too unreliable to start doing much editing, maybe one day back in Oz. Over to you guys. Ex nihil 06:34, 13 August 2007 (UTC)