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 41 to 50 of 50 open questions, page 3 of 3.
Measurement 7
A quantity nobody has pinned down closely enough to settle the matter.
Moorland
What is the total global area of moorland?
Open Moorland
Why It Is Open Moorland occurs as a habitat type across tropical Africa, northern and western Europe and South America rather than as one bounded place; this atlas's own cited Wikipedia article states only that Great Britain holds an estimated 10 to 15 percent of the world's moors, a proportion that itself implies no global total is stated anywhere in the article, since the figure is given as a share rather than alongside an absolute worldwide total.
What Would Settle It A single authoritative global inventory of moorland extent across every region where it occurs, under one consistent definition distinguishing moorland from heath and from tundra.
Expertise Needed Physical geography / vegetation ecology
Question posed in
Moorland (Wikipedia), Wikipedia article body, states Great Britain holds 10-15 percent of the world's moors, no combined global area figure anywhere in the article.
Sky Island
What is the total combined area of the world's sky islands?
Open Sky Island
Why It Is Open Sky islands are isolated mountain ranges found across many disconnected regions worldwide (the Madrean Archipelago, East African and other ranges across the Afrotropical, Australasian, Indomalayan, Nearctic, Neotropical and Palearctic realms), each with its own extent; this atlas's own cited Wikipedia article lists numerous examples by realm and gives individual elevation figures but no aggregate area measurement anywhere in the text, since the concept describes a pattern of isolation rather than one bounded region.
What Would Settle It An authoritative global inventory listing every recognized sky island range with its own area, summed under one consistent definition of what counts as a sky island.
Expertise Needed Biogeography
Question posed in
Sky Island (Wikipedia), Wikipedia article body, lists sky island examples by realm with individual elevations, states no aggregate area figure anywhere in the article.
Classification 3
Recorded as unresolved.
Gobi Desert
Open Question: Gobi Desert
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).
Moorland
Where exactly does heath vegetation end and moorland begin?
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).
Baobab
Has the IUCN Red List assigned a conservation status category to the African baobab (Adansonia digitata)?
Open Baobab
Why It Is Open As of the cited source (Wikipedia, current to February 2025), the African baobab has not yet been classified by the IUCN Red List, even though there is evidence its populations may be declining. This atlas's conservation-status property is a closed enum of assessed categories (Least Concern through Critically Endangered, plus Data Deficient), and none of them honestly represents the simple absence of any assessment, so no property value was written.
What Would Settle It A future IUCN Red List assessment publishing a conservation-status category for Adansonia digitata, at which point the live category can be recorded directly on the species entity.
Expertise Needed Conservation biology, IUCN Species Survival Commission assessment
Question posed in
Adansonia digitata (Wikipedia).
interpretation 1
Recorded as unresolved.
Great Plains
Open Question: Great Plains
Open Great Plains
Why It Is Open Fossil dental-wear evidence has revived a dispute over why grazing mammals on the Great Plains evolved such abrasion-resistant teeth: the traditional account credits grass itself, while a competing hypothesis points to windblown grit and dust instead.
What Would Settle It Comparative dental microwear and phytolith analysis distinguishing tooth wear caused by grass silica from wear caused by ingested mineral grit.
Expertise Needed Paleontology
Question posed in
Great Plains (Wikipedia).
inventory 1
Recorded as unresolved.
Kruger National Park
Open Question: Kruger National Park
Open Kruger National Park
Why It Is Open Kruger National Park's own recorded insect inventory is incomplete; its Wikipedia entry states the total number of Lepidoptera species in the park is unknown but could be in the order of 7,000.
What Would Settle It A systematic lepidopteran survey of the park's full range of habitats and seasons.
Expertise Needed Entomology
Question posed in
Kruger National Park (Wikipedia).
Not Yet Classified 3
Recorded as unresolved.
Coral Bleaching
How fully can a coral reef recover from a severe bleaching event if ocean warming continues?
Open Coral Bleaching
Why It Is Open Bleached coral can survive and recover if the stress is brief, but scientists are still working out how repeated, prolonged heat stress under continued warming affects a reef's long-term capacity to bounce back.
What Would Settle It Long-term monitoring of reef recovery trajectories across repeated bleaching events under different warming scenarios, tied to disease-susceptibility research.
Expertise Needed Marine biology and coral reef ecology
Question posed in
Coral Bleaching (NOAA Ocean Service).
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.