Talk:Galápagos Rise

Ambiguity

re: the other "Galapagos Rise"

At this time, just want to make notice that some scientists (geophysicists, etc.) give the name "Galapagos Rise" to another ocean floor feature, near, but as far as I can tell in no way related to, the Galapagos Rise described in this article. It is an area of elevation within the Nazca Plate "located between 13° S, 95.5° W and 9.5° S, 94° W." (http://www.geophysics.zmaw.de/index.php?id=59). This may be why some websites seem to avoid the term "ridge" or "rise" for the area described in this article(e.g., "Galapagos Spreading Centre"), although a number of I think knowledgeable if not authoritative (i.e., authored by geo-scientists) websites and web-posted abstracts also refer to the area of this article as the "Galapagos Rise". (Hopefully none of these scientists use the same name for both these areas). Also, I first got on to this because my Replogle "World Ocean" series globe puts the Galapagos Rise at this alternate location/definition, as well as my old National Geographic Atlas "Pacific Ocean Floor" map pages. I'm not saying anything in the article is wrong, but I think the problem is evident. I don't know how to generally, nor how Wikipedia would, deal with such authoritative ambiguity.

John McDonald 2006.08.21 6:10pm

Hess Deep

In off-wiki (following links here) pages, the Hess Deep is discussed (e.g. a December 2002 Columbia University Earth Institute News article article, with a map, "Columbia University Researchers Find Key to the Formation of New Seafloor Spreading Centers") but I've found no mention of it on Wikipedia. — Athænara ✉ 08:12, 7 February 2007 (UTC)

Galapagos spreading centre

The boundary between the Cocos and Nazca plates is generally known as the "Cocos–Nazca spreading system" - see Peirce et al. (2023). The western end of the system is the Galapagos spreading centre, extending from close to the East Pacific Rise as far as the Inca Fracture Zone. It then proceeds to its junction with the southeastern end of the Middle America Trench via a set of short ridges (the Ecuador and Costa Rica rifts) offset by longer fracture zones (the Ecuador and Panama fracture zones). The current content of this page is about the Cocos–Nazca spreading system. The Galapagos Rise is in fact an extinct spreading centre now within the northwestern part of the Nazca plate, as shown here. There is quite a lot written about the Galapagos rise, so I think that we should keep this page, just with different content.

New pages on the overall Cocos–Nazca spreading centre and the more specific Galápagos spreading centre are I think necessary. Mikenorton (talk) 20:48, 3 December 2024 (UTC)

I've rewritten this article to match the sources (more to come on its history and geometry) and created one both of the new articles (which also need expanding). Mikenorton (talk) 11:05, 8 December 2024 (UTC)

"Tectonics" section heading

@ChaseKiwi: - I originally called this section "History", for which I have a moderately strong preference, although "Development" might also work. As this is a completely inactive feature, either of these seems more appropriate than "Tectonics", which to me implies that the feature is currently active, although I'm not entirely sure why I feel that way. Mikenorton (talk) 17:40, 16 December 2024 (UTC)

Good, we are gradually getting this article in better shape. I personally think history as a title in any geographical feature should deal with human discovery which may have been the early 1960s. I had never understood tectonics to only apply to currently geologically active structures and in any case the rise is not totally seismically inactive. You and I might be interested in the tectonics but we have to remember in all such articles about large sea floor features that their notability to the general reader is usually because of their geographical size, or exploitable resource potential, not because they are a standard tectonic analysis example. I have possibly a different perspective to you.

I do have a problem with you removing a map that is complementary and information rich to that inserted by you and that allowed the reader geographical orientation on what is a geographical feature of the present seafloor. This was the purpose, not illustrating the tectonics. Your addition shows useful tectonic detail such as a microplate that has not existed as a separate entity for 5.3 Ma, fossil spreading centres that have been inactive for at least 2 Ma and finally the fracture zones that I deliberately did not label on my geographical orientation map, even though two delimit the rise. You many not be aware that the names of the two Gallego FZs have not yet been agreed internationally e.g. see marine Gazetter) so are not appropriate to add to a geographical map as opposed to a tectonic one. The tectonic map you inserted does not label nearby basins etc found in standard geographical reference works. I had not previously mapped the two Gallego FZs for the relevant OSM mapping project of fracture zones, and give you thanks for bring suitable sources to my attention if I or others decide to map them. I ask that you either reinstate my geographical orientation map or give me the go ahead to do so with possible editorial clarification. This is as I do not like what seems to be the potential for an accidental edit war due to different perceptions as to what is important in this article.ChaseKiwi (talk) 12:10, 17 December 2024 (UTC) ChaseKiwi (talk) 12:10, 17 December 2024 (UTC)

I am probably guilty of looking at this from an entirely geological perspective rather than an oceanographical one. I have no issue with the annotated image also being in the article, but I think that it should be smaller and (from a personal perspective) the text that is white, which is nearly unreadable to me, should be in another (darker) colour. I took a look at reducing the size of the map that you provided but couldn't find any way to do that.

Regarding the section title, how would you feel about "Tectonic development", as that is what is being described? Mikenorton (talk) 23:15, 19 December 2024 (UTC)

I have added a smaller map and orientated it around the rise. I can not do any smaller without losing text legibility for the features of interest(we should meet wikipedia standards in text size for annotated images which you do not need to do for a thumb). The white colour is a compromise as you can mouse over to see the name better and black is best for the feature of real interest. I am quite happy with tectonic development and you or I can change section title but thought it best to add the map to see if you have any further comments on it for fine tuning. as it does rather overwhem your thumb. But we can make the thumb 395px wide if we want.ChaseKiwi (talk) 23:37, 19 December 2024 (UTC)

I did some draft editing and page layout will be much improved if we go to 390px for your maps thumb and add a couple of sentences on geography or bathyometric features. This should be easily possible for either you or me but requires me to look back in the literature to see if for example I can extract depth info for the ridge which I saw in one early article. ChaseKiwi (talk) 23:53, 19 December 2024 (UTC)