Nature Atlas
Things this atlas does not know. Each entry is a question that specialists
have posed and not settled, recorded with what would actually resolve it and which
expertise the answer needs.
These are kept deliberately, rather than quietly omitted. An atlas that shows
only what it is sure of implies a confidence it has not earned, and the gaps are often where
the interesting work is. Several sit exactly where two fields fail to meet: identifying the
hyssop of the Hebrew Bible needs a botanist and a philologist of Biblical Hebrew, and neither
one settles it alone.
Grouped by the shape of the gap rather than its subject: what sort of thing is unresolved.
Showing 21 to 22 of 22 open questions, page 2 of 2.
Not Yet Classified 3
Recorded as unresolved.
Ocean Acidification
How severely and how quickly will continued ocean acidification affect shell- and skeleton-building marine life across different species?
Open Ocean Acidification
Why It Is Open The chemistry of ocean acidification is well established, but how various calcifying species and food webs will respond as pH continues to drop is still being actively researched.
What Would Settle It Long-term, multi-species experiments and field observation tracking calcification rates and population effects as ocean pH continues to fall.
Expertise Needed Marine chemistry and marine biology
Question posed in
Ocean Acidification (NOAA Ocean Service).
Desertification
Does the Sahel's post-1980s vegetation recovery mark a genuine reversal of desertification, or a temporary, rainfall-driven rebound that could revert if drought returns?
Open Desertification
Why It Is Open Desertification has no single settled scientific definition (more than 100 formal definitions were in circulation as of 2005), and satellite vegetation records showing Sahel greening since the 1980s are read by different researchers either as a genuine reversal of land degradation or as a rainfall-driven rebound that leaves the underlying vulnerability unresolved, a live disagreement already on record for the Sahara-Desertification link on this atlas.
What Would Settle It Long-term, ground-truthed monitoring that separates rainfall-driven vegetation greening from actual soil and land-productivity recovery, replicated across the Sahel's different rainfall zones and tested against a future return of drought conditions.
Expertise Needed Dryland ecology and climatology
Question posed in
Desertification (Wikipedia), Definitions section.