Wikipedia:Peer review/Surtsey/archive1

Surtsey

Surtsey is a very interesting island, not even 40 years old and one of the few times the formation of a volcano from the ground up has been observed. I've done quite a bit of work on this article but I'm sure there's many ways it can be improved, so I'm casting around for any ideas and suggestions of what else should be included. Worldtraveller 16:30, 15 Feb 2005 (UTC)

• An enthralling subject! I'm delighted it's getting attention, but was horrified to see in the Lead the statement that since 1967, when the island reached its maximum size of 2.7 km², "wind and wave erosion has seen the island steadily diminish in size, in the year 2002 it was only 1.4 km² in size." (Hasn't anybody measured it since 2002? Measurements given under "Settlement of life"—slightly odd placement— are from 2001.) That sounds horribly like it'll be all gone soon, especially that "steadily". Some reassurance was brought by the soothing heading "A permanent island" below, and the statement that since 1967 "erosion has seen the island diminish in size somewhat". But I'd really like to see this apparent contradiction resolved. 2.7 to 1.4, practically halving in size, is to diminish "somewhat"...? And can we, or can't we, trust that "hard cap of extremely erosion-resistant rock" to protect what's left of the island? An explicit and internally consistent projection of hopes and fears for the future of Surtsey would be great.

I think I gleaned from a documentary the claim that Surtsey was colonized by plants (from seeds dropped by birds) and birds much more quickly than the scientific community had predicted. Do you know if that's true? Would it be worth including, to qulify the "gradually", and to inject a little more bzazz into the rather short and sedately narrated "Settlement of life" section?

The image is hauntingly beautiful. (Well, I have a taste for the bleak.) Is it possible to get more images? The scientists allowed on the island have presumably brought cameras sometimes: is everything of that nature copyrighted? Naturally it would be wonderful to have an image (or, fevered dream, a video clip!) of the original eruption. To my memory, the documentaries I've seen about Surtsey (I'd get up off my deathbed to watch a Surtsey documentary) have had lots of great footage of the island being born, filmed from airplanes, of course. But I suppose none of it is PD? Failing that, perhaps an animated GIF, like of the tsunami on the Main Page? A map showing growth, then diminution over the years? Btw, I read the image caption as claiming that that image ("Surtsey from plane, 1999.jpg") is a satellite image, which is obviously not the case. Could the article also display inline the cool satellite image that's linked to? Those NASA images are free to use, aren't they?

But I especially need a state-of-the-art prediction for Surtsey's future, you want me to sleep at night, don't you? Bishonen | Talk 17:54, 16 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Thank you very much for these very helpful suggestions! I can only hope that the section I've added about the future of Surtsey has come soon enough to prevent a sleepless night for you - you'll be relieved to hear that it seems the island will be with us for a long while yet :) I hope I have made the article consistent with itself now on that score. I've expanded the 'Settlement of life' section a bit, hopefully made it more lively reading. I'll have to do a bit more reading around to try to discover how the spread of life compared to scientific expectations though. I found some PD photos of the eruption. I also removed the confusing link to satellite image in the caption of the top photo, and uploaded that image for use later in the article. No luck in finding any PD footage unfortunately, I am not sure there is any, sadly.

Thanks again - grateful for any further thoughts you might have. Worldtraveller 22:48, 16 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Phew! [Breaking out major bath towel to wipe sweat of anxiety from brow]. I did see the new section just before bedtime, thanks for saving me the nightmares! The NASA pic is calming too, by displaying the classic round volcano shape + sandspit: it shows this is no mere falling-apart sliver, as it could have been from the airplane image, but a robust island wearing a hard hat. Cool. I really can't think of anything else. The "Settlement of life" section is very nice, with the suggestive mention of the intrepid early scouting gulls. :-) Maybe the page still needs something... a little more flesh, somehow. I can't exactly think of what, though. Maybe something about the shape you don't see? The island is the tip of a big-ass underwater mountain, presumaby? Are there PD drawings of what the mountain looks like? Have divers been permitted to go down there? Does it have, uh, I don't know, a special underwater fauna of its own? Anyway, I do appreciate your taking on this coolest-ever subject, I'm sure it'll make a great featured article. (Many apologies, incidentally, for chatting with Giano on your talk page.) Bishonen | Talk 20:05, 17 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Glad the info got to you in time :) Thanks very much for further suggestions - I'll see what I can find out about the under-sea portion of the volcano, it may make an interesting section. And no worries about chatting on my talk page, I'm happy to play host any time! Worldtraveller 15:32, 21 Feb 2005 (UTC)

First, as Worldtraveller pointed out most of what has been washed away is stray tehera, Surtsey is likeley to looks something like this in the future once most or all tehera is washed away and the ocean starts (slowly) to erode the bedrock.

I think there's alot that can be added to the article, Worldtraveller and others have done a great so far of bringing this up to par, a large obsticle for them however is that alot of the source material is in Icelandic.

First, the plant and animal life, I found information on the plant and animal life to be incomplete and in some cases (as far as I can see) wrong, e.g. in total some 30 species of plants are found on Surtsey. this conflicts with this which lists findings as of 2003: Með þessari viðbót hafa fundist 60 tegundir háplantna í Surtsey frá því fyrsta plantan nam þar land árið 1965. (Icelandic: with these additions sixty species of high plants (I'm unaware of the proper translation for this technical term or its definition) have been found in Surtsey since the first plant settled there in 1965), this only lists high plants which are presumably plants beyond a certan size or plants which just grow upwards (as opposed to e.g. moss), although I have no idea, one thing that is certain however is that the number of plants in this subset of all plants is tvice as large than the number of plants claimed to be in the universal set in the article.

Furthermore information on animal life is lacking, in an expedition to the island in 2004, detailed in this article (complete with pictures), several Atlantic Puffins were found. Although the scientists 'saw' no nests they presume them to be 2-3 judging by the behaviour of the birds as they were feeding (they frequenty disappeared into the side of rocks at thee different locations, puffins often nests at such locations). A section on all these findings, and all plant and animal findings by year should be added to the article.

On to other issues, there is no information at all on the naming dispute, there is a paragraph on the issue in Íslenska Alfræðiorðabókin (The Icelandic Encyclopedia) which I have a copy of but cannot find at the moment, several names were apperently proposed including Ísleifsey (Ísleifs Island, a reference to the boat that first witnessed it), Vestey (West Island, a references to the Vestmannaeyjar archipelago) was apperently quite popular with the population of Heimaey at the time. Also, one proposed name (IIRC) was nýey (new island), proponents of this name made (IIRC) the argument that when the island disappeared back into the ocean, as was presumed would happen soon at the time the name could simply be changed to nýei, but ei is a one of the words in Icelandic that can be used as not (also as a suffix), ei and ey are pronounced in the same way in Icelandic, and i don't know about you but native speakers at least think this proposition if funny:)

Also, regarding the french landing, the Icelandic Coast Guard was critisised at time for not being the first to make a landing on the island, their directors response was something like "it's not my place to risk the life of my men for petty nationalism" (note, I'm writing this from memory so this is almost most certanly not exactly what he said, but you get the idea), I can dig up his name and the exact quote if I ever find the book mentioned above. —Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason 21:06, 2005 Feb 17 (UTC)

Many thanks for very detailed comments! I have added more information about life on the island, although undoubtedly there is more that can be said. I'd need to do more reading around on that, and my knowledge of Icelandic is certainly lacking so as you say, many sources are not available to me :) I also mentioned the other possibilities for the name of the island (very interesting, I hadn't heard of them before), and the criticism of the coast guard. On both those, if you have a printed source, you can probably make what I've said more accurate. Worldtraveller 15:26, 21 Feb 2005 (UTC)

I commented out some of your new additions for now, as I said I'm not sure about some of the information I provided and will have to find the source, I'm not even sure about the name Nýe(i|y, just of the suffix. If it proves to be correct it can be reinstated but as it is I fear it might do more harm than good by providing misinformation. —Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason 03:27, 2005 Feb 23 (UTC)

Well, I hope you might be able to provide confirmation of the information at some point. In the meantime, I'll see if I can find any non-Icelandic sources with further info. Worldtraveller 16:47, 23 Feb 2005 (UTC)

I can see Surtsey whenever I take walks to the west side of town - I live on Heimaey (the only populated island in Vestmannaeyjar). Despite the fact that nobody is allowed to go to Surtsey, there are a couple of people who get to go there each year, and I have asked for permission tag along in the next trip, responce pending - if I go I'll take loads of pictures.

Anyway, last summer I held a dimunitive lecture for some NASA scientists about the errosion of Surtsey, based on the masters thesis of some guy named Björn who I can't recall the full name or e-mail address of right now; but I have it at work - I'm thinking of asking him permission to use his echogrammetric photographs on Wikipedia. Bug me about it, by all means! --Smári McCarthy 23:35, 23 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Hope you get your permission to land on the island, that would be a fabulous opportunity! If you can get the permission to use the thesis work you mention, that would be great. It occurs to me that if you live on Heimaey, you might possibly be able to ask at the Volcano Show (I think it's called that) if there is any footage of the Surtsey eruption in the public domain - that would really enhance this article no end. I was going to get in touch with Villi Knudsen of the Volcano Show in Reykjavík, but he doesn't seem to have a website any more unfortunately. Worldtraveller 17:38, 28 Feb 2005 (UTC)

I know the curator of the volcanic film show - it's on the same street as I live on and her son is one of my closest friends. Unfortunately the footage they have is not public domain, but my former maths teacher probably has some good footage of the erruption; I'll ask him. I haven't yet contacted the man who made the thesis, been a bit busy recently. Regarding the trip to Surtsey, it won't be until around the end of July. Until then, there's work to be done... keep me posted. --Smári McCarthy 11:30, 3 Mar 2005 (UTC)