Talk:Northern Mojave–Mono Lake water resource subregion

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High overlap with South Lahontan hydrologic region?[edit]

This region appears to have about 95% overlap with South Lahontan hydrologic region --- the difference being 4,000 km² in Nevada (out of 73,000). Would it make sense to merge the two articles? — hike395 (talk) 05:00, 16 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]

See, this is a very fascinating question that I both don't have the answer to and am not sure I care about! Based on my reading of Hydrologic unit system (United States) it's essentially like federal versus state court. A lot of overlap and similar stuff but they work in parallel and have slightly different administrative/bureaucratic reach. I think ecologically it's obviously the same place. The only question is should the administrative parsing be preserved. My instinct is...yes they should be separate. My main thing is that the California regions seem to be more effectively subdivided into further into underground water basins and the federal HUC is more focused on the surface water. Ground and surface water are also obviously related concepts, too! but again, not identical. Take a look at the subdivisions listed on South Coast hydrologic region (state) and Southern California Coastal water resource subregion (federal) and let me know what you think. jengod (talk) 05:19, 16 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not a hydrological expert at all. In terms of WP, I'm thinking that neither South Lahontan hydrologic region nor Northern Mojave–Mono Lake water resource subregion passes WP:GNG as stand-alone articles. The SLHR is defined by the State of California, and the NMMLWRS is defined by the USGS. Neither article (by itself) appears to have multiple sources independent of these agencies:

For South Lahontan hydrologic region, there's one non-California website that discusses it (cawaterlibrary.net) and that's partially funded by the Department of Water Resources. I can't find much else, except for this from an NPR station.
For Northern Mojave–Mono Lake water resource subregion, all of the references are from the USGS. Even the sources that are hosted at NIST are originally published by USGS. I did find this website.

If we merge the two articles together (with some suitable name) then the union of all of the sources talk about the region, and then I think the merged article would pass WP:GNG.

@Jengod: What do you think? — hike395 (talk) 20:22, 16 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I personally would never integrate them unless challenged, and at point I would petulantly insist that Death Valley freshwater ecoregion get thrown in there too. (As a side note I have a chip on my shoulder about how our notability guidelines kind of don't "understand" dryland regions but that's an inchoate rant for some other day.) Wikipedia is typically built in this chaotic bizarre patchwork fashion. I'd *personally* wait and see what grows from the seeds planted by the editor of United States hydrological unit system (originally part of hydrologic unit). I feel like there a very interesting article-tree framework here; I personally wouldn't want to prune it back to hard before it's had a chance to work itself into something. Part of the reason I was so glad to see your North Lahontan was because I knew we had Borrego Valley groundwater basin out there kind of attached to nothing and I was like, aha! Now I'm motivated to create Colorado River hydrologic region and I can start to see the pieces of a puzzle coming together like ye olde Wikipedia logo. jengod (talk) 20:48, 16 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Certainly in the old days, when you and I were early editors, things were very chaotic and patchwork. It may be less true now. I'll leave things be. — hike395 (talk) 14:02, 17 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Heh hike395 I have returned after a long absence to restore mayhem to its rightful position as a driver of Wikipedia. Also, low-key plagiarizing U.S. government documents has been the basis of a lot of good work on Wikipedia. Let's see where it leads this time. 😝 jengod (talk) 14:43, 17 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]