Talk:Outline of Earth sciences

Suggestions for List of basic Earth science topics from a new-to-Wikipedia Geoscientist

(Copied from User_talk:Geologyguy)

This is my first post to someone else's user page; please pardon any faux pas and advise. I write to you because you seem to have been involved in earlier revisions of this page, you seem to be active, and you are a fellow IU Geology grad (BA 1992, MS 1997), though I took my classes at IUPUI.
I would like to suggest a change in the List of basic Earth science topics page, but I'm unsure how to go about it and was unwilling to just make the change without conferring with more experienced users.
Specifically, I have a problem with the use of the term 'Lithosphere' to indicate all solid material below the pedosphere and cryosphere. I have taught introductory physical geology for 15 years and the way I describe the 'solid' portion of the earth is to explain that geologists divide the earth in two different ways it based on two properties: composition and mechanics.
As I'm sure you know, compositionally we have:

• iron/nickel core
• iron/magnesium rich silicate mantle
• granitic/basaltic crust.

In terms of mechanics, we have:

• solid inner core
• liquid outer core
• solidish lower mantle
• gooey asthenosphere
• brittle lithosphere.

Since the term lithosphere is commonly used to indicate this more brittle, uppermost portion of the mantle plus the crust, I find that to use lithosphere by its most literal sense (rock layer) could cause confusion for some. I would propose using the term geosphere to mean the whole of the rocky portion of the earth, meaning 'c' from Bates & Jackson
Below, there could be the list the sub-layers in relative order, perhaps even giving an image showing how the two ways of dividing these layers relate to each other.
Is this something that I should just change and see what kind of response there is?

On a related note, I am interested in soil and noted that one of the requested topics in the WP:SOIL area is the term 'argillic', and adjective that is usually used with respect to a soil horizon. Are adjectives usually given a separate entry in Wikipedia? I did add the term to Wikitionary, as it was missing there.
Thanks, Vince
Fhernly (talk) 20:57, 23 February 2008 (UTC)

References

Major rename proposal of certain "lists" to "outlines"

See Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)#Major rename proposal of certain "lists" to "outlines".

The Transhumanist 00:30, 12 June 2008 (UTC)

Rename proposal for this page and all the pages of the set this page belongs to

See the proposal at the Village pump

The Transhumanist 09:04, 4 July 2008 (UTC)

Guidelines for outlines

Guidelines for the development of outlines are being drafted at Wikipedia:Outlines.

Your input and feedback is welcomed and encouraged.

The Transhumanist 00:31, 24 May 2009 (UTC)

The "History of" section needs links!

Please add some relevant links to the history section.

Links can be found in the "History of" article for this subject, in the "History of" category for this subject, or in the corresponding navigation templates. Or you could search for topics on Google - most topics turn blue when added to Wikipedia as internal links.

The Transhumanist 00:31, 24 May 2009 (UTC)

Merge discussion

I propose merging Earth's spheres into this page. I don't think "Earth'a spheres" are a real topic in earth science which warrant a page; the information would be better presented as an outline (I've already made some changes at Earth's spheres reflecting that). Scientific29 (talk) 23:10, 11 February 2011 (UTC)

dissenting vote (against merging) --boarders paradise (talk) 07:17, 19 April 2011 (UTC)

On the subject of branches

Okay, so what I've done so far has been very bold already, so I think I better not go any further. There was a list of subjects within the Earth Science page, so I made it it's own page, as I thought it'd be more appropriate, however the is a larger list here. I'm not really sure how to handle this, we could ditch the page I made and link to the subsection of this. We could combine the info into one the page I made and make it more fleshed out, leaving a link to that page here and a summery saying the broad topics. HalfHat 11:07, 28 November 2014 (UTC)

And I've moved that list back to the article (after removing the copyvio tag nonsense - as that blog was an obvious copy of WP content). Seems the Earth Science page can handle the list. However if there be consensus to merge that list here ... then can be done. Vsmith (talk) 14:05, 28 November 2014 (UTC)

It's more that it feels out of place, I think a paragraph would be more useful. HalfHat 14:18, 28 November 2014 (UTC)

Then perhaps start a discussion on talk:Earth science and perhaps it'll happen. Vsmith (talk) 15:33, 28 November 2014 (UTC)

Should be "Earth science", not "earth science"

The word "earth" means, roughly, "dirt". "Earth science" refers to the science of the planet whose name is "Earth" with a capital "E". Indeed, the article Earth science has, in its lead, three different such capitalizations (not at sentence beginnings) and no non-capitalizations. Loraof (talk) 16:03, 22 February 2016 (UTC)

Indeed, it is correctly capitalized at Category:History of Earth science and Category:Wikipedia books on Earth sciences. I'm going to go ahead and capitalize it here as needed. Loraof (talk) 16:14, 22 February 2016 (UTC)