Talk:Tigris–Euphrates river system

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Ecoregions Mid‑importance

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Iraq Top‑importance

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Turkey Mid‑importance

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Euphrates-Tigris Basin

It seems to me that there should at least be a redirect for Euphrates-Tigris Basin or Tigris-Euphrates Basin. Would it redirect here or here? (A nice and speedy answer would be terrific, since I'm doing a CLEP exam in a week, and need to know about stuff like this! I love this website and about the Euphrates-Tigris River. some people call me a nerd but I'm just educated. Italic text'Bold text;)--ViolinGirl^♪ 15:19, 23 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

"crime?"

"It also faced one of the massive economic-environmental crimes in modern history: the destruction of Iraq's wetlands."

I'm not sure that an opiniated word like "crime" should be mentioned here. Many other wetlands have been drained in the past in several places in the world. It is a destruction of wetland, but a label "crime" shows some bias - possibly not the best place to put in an encyclopedia?

Rwos (talk) 01:17, 8 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Its not just the marsh

The person who wrote this seems to be obsessed with the marshes in the lower region of the Tigris Euphrates river system, and its unique political and ecological issues. This river system is thousands of kilometres long and hundreds of kilometres wide. It isn't just the marshes near Basra. A more comprehensive view of the river system and its drainage basin is needed.Eregli bob (talk) 08:25, 22 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Ecological Impacts

This article needs proper citations for its claims that "between 84% and 90% of the marshes have been destroyed since the 1970s. In 1994, 60 percent of the wetlands were destroyed by Hussein's regime – drained to permit military access and greater political control of the native Marsh Arabs. " — Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.116.167.138 (talk) 21:20, 3 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]

A common impact number I see in [1.pdf sources] is a 90% reduction by 2000 or so.--NortyNort (Holla) 22:11, 3 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]

If that link doesn' work, try here Apuldram (talk) 23:02, 3 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]

External links modified (January 2018)

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Terrestrial and freshwater ecoregions

There are three different types of ecoregions, terrestrial, freshwater, and marine. To date this article has been awkwardly representing both a terrestrial ecoregion (the Tigris-Euphrates alluvial salt marsh, a flooded grasslands and savannas ecoregion [1]), and a much larger freshwater ecoregion, which includes the broader Tigris-Euphrates river system and its tributaries (WWF's Freshwater Ecoregions of the World actually divides the Tigris-Euphrates into two ecoregions, upper[2] and lower[3], but they can live together here, at least for now). The freshwater ecoregion includes the Tigris-Euphrates flooded grasslands terrestrial ecoregion, but it's much larger, and includes the forested mountains to the east and north, and the extensive dry steppes in the plains. The Mesopotamian Marshes article seemed like a better spot to treat the terrestrial ecoregion, so I set up a terrestrial ecoregion infobox and links there. This article, since it's about the river system as a whole, is better suited to serve as the freshwater ecoregion article. Tom Radulovich (talk) 21:41, 30 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

History

There have been some back-and-forth edits to the History section, removing and then adding mention of the Abbasid Caliphate.

This section is pretty thin at present. It mentions of early civilizations, which is appropriate. However without mention of later ones it gives the impression that the history of the region effectively ended 3000 years ago, which isn't true. The Abbasid Califate was a significant later civilization, enormous in extent, and Baghdad was probably the largest city in the world during the Abbasid period.

Since the article is about a river basin, it would benefit from more information on how these civilizations affected the watershed - agriculture, livestock grazing, irrigation and navigation works, introduced and extirpated species, erosion, deforestation, salinization, and so on. It could include the different groups of people who lived here and the patterns of population and urbanization over time. I'm not an expert here, but suspect environmental historians have explored these aspects of the region's history.Tom Radulovich (talk) 17:16, 7 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I've gone and put it back. I was thinking of maybe making a separate sentence explaining why it was worthy of mention, but as I said I know nothing about this subject, so I think this'll do for now. Graham87 09:59, 8 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]