Open Questions

Open Gobi Desert

Why It Is Open The Gobi Desert's own Wikipedia entry states that some geographers and ecologists treat its western area as a separate desert, the Taklamakan, rather than as part of the Gobi itself.

What Would Settle It A geomorphological and ecological survey establishing where the Taklamakan's dune sea and dry climate genuinely diverge from the Gobi's cold steppe-desert character, agreed on by the physical geography community.

Expertise Needed Physical geography

Question posed in Gobi Desert (Wikipedia).

Open African Great Lakes

Why It Is Open Reference sources state the surface area of individual lakes (Victoria, Tanganyika, Malawi and others) but disagree on how many lakes belong to the African Great Lakes group itself, and no live source found states a single combined-area total for the group as such. This atlas's own cited Wikipedia article states the lakes' combined water volume ("Collectively, they contain 31,000 km3 (7,400 mi3) of water.") but gives no combined surface-area figure anywhere in the article.

What Would Settle It A single authoritative geographic or limnological source that both fixes which lakes belong to the African Great Lakes group and states a combined surface-area figure for exactly that membership.

Expertise Needed Physical geography / limnology

Question posed in African Great Lakes (Wikipedia), Wikipedia article body, states combined water volume, no combined-area figure anywhere in article.

Open Indri

Why It Is Open Published population estimates for the indri range from 1,000 to 10,000 individuals, a full order of magnitude of uncertainty, reflecting how little of its fragmented eastern Madagascar rainforest range has been systematically surveyed.

What Would Settle It A systematic acoustic or transect survey across the indri's remaining rainforest fragments, standardised so counts from different reserves can be summed without double counting.

Expertise Needed Population Ecology

Question posed in Indri (Wikipedia), Population section.

Open Amazon River Dolphin

Why It Is Open World Land Trust's own species page states there are no range-wide estimates of abundance or population trends for Inia geoffrensis, only regional survey data; a 22-year standardized count in Brazil's Mamirauá Reserve documents a sustained decline, and Brazilian Amazon surveys separately estimate a 6.7 percent annual population decline, but no basin-wide census across the Amazon, Orinoco and Madeira systems has ever been completed.

What Would Settle It A coordinated, standardized survey across the full range (Brazil, Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela and Bolivia) using consistent transect methodology, of the kind already run locally in the Mamirauá Reserve, extended basin-wide and repeated on a regular interval.

Expertise Needed Population ecology / conservation biology

Question posed in Amazon River Dolphin (World Land Trust), Species page, population section.

Open Agile Gibbon

Why It Is Open The cited Wikipedia source states the species is endangered due to habitat loss and the pet trade but gives no population count or estimate range anywhere in the article.

What Would Settle It An IUCN Red List assessment or field census stating a total or estimated range-wide population figure for the agile gibbon.

Expertise Needed Primatology / wildlife population ecology

Question posed in Agile Gibbon (Wikipedia), Lead section.

Open Earthworm

Why It Is Open Agricultural and ecological surveys count earthworm abundance locally, but no comprehensive census aggregates the roughly 7,000 known earthworm species across all soils worldwide, and population density varies enormously by soil type, moisture, and land use.

What Would Settle It A coordinated global soil biodiversity survey standardizing earthworm sampling methodology across biomes and land-use types.

Expertise Needed Soil ecology and edaphology

Question posed in Earthworm (Wikipedia), As an invasive species section, species count sentence.

Open Mesopotamian Marshes

Why It Is Open The marshes were reduced to a small fraction of their pre-1990s extent by deliberate drainage, and reflooding has been underway since 2003, but published figures for the currently restored area diverge significantly by source and by year, and many describe the recovery only in relative terms (a share of the historic maximum) rather than a settled square-kilometer figure. Water flow from the Tigris and Euphrates, itself affected by upstream damming in Turkey, Syria and Iran and by regional drought, keeps changing the extent year to year rather than letting it settle.

What Would Settle It A current, dated satellite-derived wetland-extent survey, ideally repeated over consecutive years by the same methodology, published by a body such as UN Environment, the Iraqi government's own marshland restoration program, or a peer-reviewed remote-sensing study, would give a figure that can be cited with real confidence rather than the mixed and dated estimates currently circulating.

Expertise Needed Wetland ecology and remote sensing

Question posed in UNESCO World Heritage Centre.

Open Aardwolf

Why It Is Open The cited Wikipedia source gives only a maximum density figure (no more than one individual per square kilometer where food is abundant), not a total population count or range-wide estimate.

What Would Settle It A range-wide population survey or IUCN Red List assessment stating a total number or a defensible estimate range for wild aardwolf numbers.

Expertise Needed Wildlife population ecology

Question posed in Aardwolf (Wikipedia), Conservation section.

Open Wild Silk Moth

Why It Is Open The Wikipedia article on Bombyx mandarina, fetched live for this pass, carries no IUCN Red List conservation status; the species may be unassessed or assessed only in a specialist source not consulted here.

What Would Settle It An IUCN Red List entry, or a Lepidoptera-specific conservation assessment, naming a status for Bombyx mandarina.

Question posed in Bombyx mandarina (Wikipedia).

Open Moorland

Why It Is Open Wikipedia's own Moorland article states plainly that experts disagree on the exact distinction between heath and moorland: moor is generally described as highland, high-rainfall ground while heath is lowland and more often shaped by human activity, but the line is not sharp and both the Heath and Moorland articles describe each as closely related to the other with no agreed boundary.

What Would Settle It A published vegetation-classification standard drawing an explicit, measurable line between heath and moorland (by elevation, rainfall, peat depth or floristic composition) accepted across the ecological literature, rather than the regional and traditional usage the sources currently describe.

Question posed in Moorland (Wikipedia).