Mapmaking commission for my alternate Earth, please

[Jdailey]

Introduction/background:

I have been building and rebuilding an alternate Earth as my response to our current environmental crises--droughts, fires, desertification, hot winters, non-white Christmases, to name a few. Currently, I am rewriting the canon so that it would make better sense geologically. The details are apparently too vast to post in one thread, so please, bear with me. The book I intend to write about that world has not yet been published, as I still have no idea how to format a Word document into a coffe-table-style picture book, so the window is still open.


Project scope:

A book written in the style of a nonfiction book, reflecting not just the geography of this project, but also its biology and, eventually, its cultures. Anyone who makes this map will be credited in the book--I'd be remiss not to.


Setting:

Alternate Earth 111, known to the average Joe as "Great Lakes Earth".


Design concept:

An equirectangular scientifically realistic projection of the world map. Target style similar to this reference: (https://www.eea.europa.eu/data-and-m...ps/image_large) Oceans are left in plain blue. Full details in the subsequent threads because they exceed the 20,000-word limit, so please, be patient.


Number of maps:

Three in total, each of the same alternate Earth. One for the geographic elevation relief, one for the ocean currents and one for the climate using the Köppen classification system.


Technical:

Either PNG or JPG
72 inches maximum width
Full color


Copyright:

Remains with cartographer.
Publisher retains right to reproduce the maps in the setting sourcebook and for promotional materials.


Deadline:

Not set. Don't want to raise stress on both sides. However, as far as payment goes, the window will close on October and reopen on New Years. The next closure will be during the 40 days of Lent. The rest of the year, however, I will be available to pay.


Design process:

Stage 1 – initial concept sketch – once approved
Stage 2 – A 50% design development submittal for review – once approved
Stage 3 – A 90% design development submittal for review – once approved
Stage 4 – Final Maps


Payment:

$180 per stage, payable via PayPal.


Contact:

walkingwithmerlin(at)gmail(dot)com

[Jdailey]

Antarctica



Of all of Great Lakes Earth’s continents, Antarctica has the fewest number of differences from back home. It’s still cold, and it’s still icy. But there are still differences.


For one thing, it’s got company. Extending 1500 miles northwest to southeast is an island three times the size of California. The microcontinent of Kerguelen used to exist back home, but it has been hidden beneath the waves for 20 million years. But that’s not what happened on Great Lakes Earth. Here, repeated waves of magma intrusion have thickened its granitic core, keeping the microcontinent perfectly and stably afloat. The uplift is so successful that its highest point, Mount Ross, stands not 6,070 feet above sea level like back home, but 19,916.


The mountains within Antarctica are much taller than they are back home. Mount Kirkpatrick, the highest point in the mighty Transantarctic Range, stands 19,393 feet above sea level, not 14,856. Its highest point, the Vinson Massif of the Ellsworth Mountains, is even taller, at 20,942 feet above sea level.

[Jdailey]

Asia



Back home, the collision of India that results in the formation of the Himalayas is perhaps the most defining aspect of Asia’s geography. This massive mountain range has been created with such force that it has uplifted the majority of Asia’s other mountain ranges, and so influential on the climate that over a billion people rely on the rain-soaked monsoon winds for sustenance. To our surprise, that’s not the case here on Great Lakes Earth. India is still an island. In fact, the only thing standing between it and Tibet is over two thousand miles of seawater, and that’s under the presumption that Tibet is still above the surface. Which—surprise, surprise—it isn’t. In fact, it’s a shallow, sunlit lagoon dotted with low-lying islands.


India itself looks different to ours. Back home, its oldest mountain range is the Arvalli Mountains, in which its highest peak, Guru Shikhar, stands 5,650 feet above the level of the sea. On Great Lakes Earth, the Arvalli still exist, and they are still India’s oldest mountains, but Guru Shikhar is instead 1,722 feet above sea level. The highest point in the Vindhya Range is not 2,467 feet above sea level, but 752. Dhupgarh, still the highest peak in the Satpura Range, is now 1350 feet above sea level rather than 4,430. The highest point in the Chota Nagpur Plateau has the exact same difference—1350 feet above sea level, sharply contrasted with the 4,430 it stands back home. Not even the iconic Deccan Plateau is immune to the butterfly effect. Back home, it stands 1600 feet above sea level at the highest. On Great Lakes Earth, it doesn’t get any taller than 500. Anamudi is still the tallest of the Western Ghats, except that it stands 2,695 feet above sea level, not 8,842 as is the case back home. In a similar vein, the highest point in the Eastern Ghats isn’t 5,978 feet above sea level, but 1,822. But how could the mountains and plateaus of India, so massive back home, be reduced to mere hills on Great Lakes Earth? The simple answer—rain. It is currently situated within a mostly tropical coordinate, and if there is one thing that the tropics are known for, it’s rain. Lots and lots and lots of them. So much rain can cut down surprisingly large masses of rock via the process called “chemical weathering”.


The story is similar all across the Asian mainland. Everyone has the same mountain ranges as back home, but without the Himalayas, and under the mercy of millions of years of intense rainy seasons, they are not as major as they are back home. The Greater Khingan Range in China’s Inner Mongolia Region stands no higher than 2,035 feet above sea level. The highest point in the Lesser Khingan Range, in turn, is 1,429 feet above sea level. The Changbai Mountains still separate China from Korea, and Mount Paektu is still its highest peak, but on Great Lakes Earth, it stands 2,744 feet above sea level, not 9,003. Other mountain ranges follow suit.

• Taihang Mountains: Highest point, Xiaowutai. Earth elevation: 9,455 feet above sea level. Great Lakes Earth elevation: 2,882 feet above sea level.
• Taishan Mountains: Highest point, Mount Tai. Earth elevation: 5,029 feet above sea level. Great Lakes Earth elevation: 1,532.7 feet above sea level.
• Dabie Mountains: Highest point, Mount Tianzhu. Earth elevation: 5,830 feet above sea level. Great Lakes Earth elevation: 1,777 feet above sea level.
• Kunlun Range: Highest point, Liushi Shan. Earth elevation: 23,514 feet above sea level. Great Lakes Earth elevation: 7,167 feet above sea level.
• Qinling: Highest point, Mount Taibai. Earth elevation: 12,359 feet above sea level. Great Lakes Earth elevation: 3,767 feet above sea level.
• Dabashan: Highest point, Shennong Deng. Earth elevation: 10,187 feet above sea level. Great Lakes Earth elevation: 3,105 feet above sea level.
• Yunnan-Guizhou Plateau: Earth elevation: 1,600 to 8,200 feet above sea level. Great Lakes Earth elevation: 500 to 2,500 feet above sea level.
• Hunan Province: Highest point, Ling Peak. Earth elevation: 6,963.1 feet above sea level. Great Lakes Earth elevation: 2,122.35 feet above sea level.
• Jiangxi Province: Highest point, Mount Huanggang. Earth elevation: 7,077 feet above sea level. Great Lakes Earth elevation: 2,157 feet above sea level.
• Wuling Mountains: Highest point, Mount Fanjing. Earth elevation: 8,430 feet above sea level. Great Lakes Earth elevation: 2,570 feet above sea level.
• Altyn-Tagh: Highest point, Sulamutag Feng. Earth elevation: 20,489 feet above sea level. Great Lakes Earth elevation: 6,245 feet above sea level.
• Qilian Mountains: Highest point, Qilian Shan. Earth elevation: 19,055 feet above sea level. Great Lakes Earth elevation: 5,808 feet above sea level.

With no Himalayas, these mountains are China’s highest peaks:

• Kongur Tagh, 7,649 feet above sea level
• Muztagh Ata, 7,546 feet above sea level
• Gongga Shan, 7,556 feet above sea level
• Tömür Shan, 7,439 feet above sea level

Mongolia’s highest point is still Khüiten Peak, but it stands 4,374 feet above sea level, not 14,350 feet like back home. Even the mighty mountains and plateaus of Siberia have, compared to back home, suffered major cutdowns.

• Anadyr Highlands. Maximum elevation: 1,221 feet above sea level.
• Baikal Mountains. Maximum elevation: 2,572 feet above sea level.
• Khamar-Daban. Maximum elevation: 2,396 feet above sea level.
• Chersky Range. Maximum elevation: 3,003 feet above sea level.
• Chukotka Mountains. Maximum elevation: 19,840.6 feet above sea level.
• Dzhugdzhur Mountains. Maximum elevation: 1,906 feet above sea level.
• Kolyma Mountains. Maximum elevation: 1,828 feet above sea level.
• Koryak Mountains. Maximum elevation: 27,580 feet above sea level.
• Sayan Mountains. Maximum elevation: 3,492 feet above sea level.
• Tannu-Ola Mountains. Maximum elevation: 3,061 feet above sea level.
• Ural Mountains, though that’s a bit of a political debate. Maximum elevation: 1,895 feet above sea level.
• Verkhoyansk Range. Maximum elevation: 2,409 feet above sea level.
• Yablonoi Mountains. Maximum elevation: 2,519 feet above sea level.
• Central Siberian Plateau. Maximum elevation: 1,678 feet above sea level.
• Altai Mountains. Maximum elevation: 4,506 feet above sea level.

Why two of the listed ranges, the Chukotka and the Koryak mountains, are actually much taller on Great Lakes Earth than they are back home is simple. Being so close to the Pacific, they are a part of one of the crowning achievements of the Golden Age of Granite, the “Monstrosities of the Ring of Fire”, as they are informally called. This same process is why modern-day Great Lakes Earth still has Beringia, a thousand-mile-wide body connecting Asia to North America. It totals in at an area of 1.6 million square miles, erasing not just the Bering Sea and the Bering Strait out of existence, but also the Chukchi, Laptev, Kara and East Siberian seas, as well as the Sea of Okhotsk, turning the islands of the Kurils into coastal strips of mainland that can get no taller than 25,177.5 feet above sea level. We’ll talk more about Beringia once we get to North America.


The monstrosities of the Chukotkas and the Koryaks are just small demonstrations of the contrast between the Pacific differences and the mainland differences. The mountains of the Pacific, both here and on Great Lakes Earth, are not affected in any way by the Himalayas. Instead, the broken pieces of earth that make up the world’s largest ocean do the hard work in that particular region. Mount Fuji is still Japan’s highest peak, but it’s a lot higher—29,083 feet above sea level, as opposed to the 12,395.8 feet back home. Incidentally, this higher elevation has transformed the Japanese chain from an archipelago to a coastal barrier standing between the Pacific Ocean and the less-than-150,000-square-mile, 1,752-foot-deep Lake Yamato, shallow enough to expose some parts of the Tsushima and Yamato basins to the surface. Kamchatka is not a peninsula like back home, but an extension of Beringia, with its highest peak, Klyuchevskaya Sopka, standing 20,334 feet above sea level. The Philippines are still present, but its highest point, Mount Apo, stands 12,646 feet above sea level, not 9,692. This sort of uplift has reduced the number of islands from 7,641 back home to 425 on Great Lakes Earth. Borneo, Sumatra and Java are the only islands in Indonesia, and they have accomplished this by not being islands. Instead, the millions of years of granitic uplift have ensured that, regardless of sea level, the Sunda Peninsula, or “Sundaland”, will always stay above the surface. Further demonstration is proven by the heights of the three “islands’” highest points—Kinabalu in Borneo, 17,530 feet above sea level; Kerinci in Sumatra, 16,289 feet above sea level; and Semeru in Java, 15,745 feet above sea level. Sundaland itself totals in at almost two million square miles, extending even to the Andaman Sea and the “island” of Hainan. When, how and why the other islands of the Indonesian island chain have sunk to the ocean remains a mystery to us.


On Great Lakes Earth, Africa has played a huge part in what we humans would call the southwestern portions of Asia. With no Red Sea, there is a debate as to whether or not certain nations like Israel would be considered African or Asian. And as a result of the tectonic snags, the Persian Gulf does not exist, just more land that will be mentioned in further detail when we get to Europe and Africa. By contrast, what’s not controversial is that the mountains are much higher than they are back home. The Pontides stand no taller than 16,854 feet above sea level, the Taurus Mountains 16,079 feet, the Caucasus 24,152 feet, the Zagros Mountains 18,874 feet, the Albroz Mountains 24,020 feet and Kopet Dagh 13,660 feet above sea level. To the southwest, the geological story is the same. In what we’d call Saudi Arabia, the mountains stand tall at 12,907 feet above sea level. Yemen, 15,698 feet. Jordan is still primarily plateau, like back home, only much taller, standing between 7,557 and 12,675 feet above sea level. The sacred mountain of Meron in Israel could be considered many miles more so on Great Lakes Earth, at 13,001 feet above sea level. Lebanon may be small, but its highest point is really high, at 13,219 feet above sea level. In what we would call Palestine, the mountains don’t get any taller than 11,092 feet above sea level. The totally-landlocked Qatar is now a mountain standing 1,109 feet above sea level. These geographical differences are the result of magmatic uplifts combined with Africa continuously pushing northwards and squishing into Europe.


In the absence of the Persian Gulf is an elongated lake, 300 square miles in area, 98 feet below sea level at the deepest and elongated to a northwest-southeast direction. Despite its resemblance to Mundafan, a paleolake from Saudi Arabia, this one has enough differences to warrant its own name. In its case, Bahr-Alqasab, from the Arabic for “Sea of Reeds”.


Behind the massive southwestern mountains is the one geographical feature that Asia shares with Europe—an enormous freshwater lake 2.8 million square miles in area, stretching from what we’d call Mongolia far into the European Alps. It’s very similar to Megalake Paratethys, which used to exist back home but, due to tectonic stresses, had been reduced into the Black and Caspian seas. So why is this one still around? Well, the simple answer is that it stands on top of a major fault line system, making it deeper than Paratethys may have been. Its deepest point, in fact, is 7,257 feet below sea level. The largest freshwater lake on Great Lakes Earth has been christened “Lake Colchis”.

[Jdailey]

South America



As with Antarctica, the geographical differences between our South America and the South America of Great Lakes Earth are minimal. The Andes are still present and Aconcagua is still the highest peak, but it stands even higher than back home, at 29,799 feet above sea level. By comparison, Mount Everest back home stands 29,031.7 feet above sea level. Which makes the Andes of Great Lakes Earth the planet’s highest mountains, with or without the Himalayas. The highest point in the neighboring Guiana Shield is still Pico da Neblina, but instead of 9,826 feet above sea level, it stands 27,795 feet. Pico da Bandeira is still the highest point in the plateau dominating southeastern Brazil, but it too stands taller at 28,411.5 feet above sea level.


But between these two higher highlands, though, the lowlands are less land than back home due to major faulting. 852,000 square miles of the Amazon Basin are missing from the rest, replaced by sea. The story is the same for 470,000 square miles of the Plata Basin and 385,000 of the Parana Basin.


During the Golden Age of Granite, magma had transformed the Rio Grande Rise and raised it to the surface as an archipelago covering an area exceeding 50,000 square miles in area. Its highest point isn’t much, no taller than 66 feet above sea level.


The island chain of Galapagos never existed on Great Lakes Earth.

[Jdailey]

Oceania



Australia, New Guinea, Tasmania and the Aru Islands are one and the same landmass, Sahul, covering a total of four million square miles. On Great Lakes Earth, the distance between it and Antarctica is 700 miles. This is because of the historical difference between our Earth and Great Lakes Earth. Back home, Tasmania, Australia and New Guinea broke off from Antarctica between 40 and 30 million years ago. On Great Lakes Earth, that happened between 20 and 15 million years ago.


Sahul’s highest point, Mount Kosciuszko, measures 23,984 feet above sea level. However, it, as well as the rest of the Great Dividing Range, would have been mostly coastal, as the entire Darling River and Lake Eyre basins are underwater, separated by a narrow peninsula.


The other major ranges of Australia, Hamersley and Macdonnell, are also far taller than back home—respectively, they reach elevations of 13,445.6 and 16,480 feet above sea level. Mount Ossa, the highest point in what we’d call Tasmania, rises up to 17,404 feet above sea level.


Where we’d expect to find the Gulf of Carpentaria, we find instead Lake Carpentaria, covering an area of less than 45,000 square miles and 82 feet below sea level at the deepest.


New Guinea, other than being connected to mainland Australia, isn’t that much different from back home. That said, its mountains, like so many others, are so much higher. Its highest point, Puncak Jaya, stands 20,908 feet above sea level.


750 miles southwest of Sahul is Broken Island, a 250-mile-wide piece of Kerguelen that is currently 900 miles northeast of its original parent. It’s a very mountainous island, with a maximum height of 10,000 feet above sea level. It rose from the surface thanks to magma during the Golden Age of Granite.


On the opposite direction is perhaps the most familiar contribution to the Golden Age of Granite. Back home, Zealandia was a very real continent. But between 50 and 35 million years ago, it sank to the bottom of the South Pacific, leaving only six percent of it above the surface. This six percent—a total of 113,514 square miles—consists of the islands of New Zealand and New Caledonia. But that’s not what happened here on Great Lakes Earth. From 50 to 35 million years ago, multiple episodes of magmatic intrusions had thickened the granite, floating it back up to the surface. The uplifts were so successful that 94% of the continent currently stands above the surface, and Mounts Panié and Cook, its two highest peaks, stand not 5,341 or 12,218 feet above sea level, as is the case back home, but 17,522 and 25,232 feet.


There is another large island in Oceania on Great Lakes Earth. Once a basaltic province that sank during the Cretaceous Period, granitic magma lifted the Manihiki Plateau up to the surface. Measuring in at 300,000 square miles in area, it stands no taller than 980 feet above sea level.


There is another basaltic plateau uplifted by granitic magma, Ontong Java. It measures in at 580,000 square miles in area and doesn’t get any higher than 5,600 feet above sea level. With Australia and New Guinea being placed more southerly, it doesn’t stand so close to a subduction zone as it does back home, which means that the Solomon Islands either never existed on Great Lakes Earth or are submerged beneath the waves. The uplfitings of both Ontong Java and Manihiki are the only explanations we can think of as to why Galapagos never existed and why the Hawaiian hotspot expired a long time ago.

[Jdailey]

[size=8=]Europe[/size]



The Golden Age of Granite had done a real number on Europe, and then some. The two tectonic snags that blocked off the Mediterranean had also conspired with the magma to make all of the mountains so much higher than they are back home. The Alps, now the western coastline of Lake Colchis, stand no higher than 20,585.43 feet above sea level. The Carpathians, now a peninsula within the inner circle of Lake Colchis, have a maximum elevation of 28,581 feet above sea level. The Great Horn of the Apennines in Italy is even greater on Great Lakes Earth, with an elevation of 12,466 feet above sea level. Botev Peak is still the highest peak in the Balkan Mountains, but now it stands 25,573 feet above sea level. The quote-unquote “Black Forest” might be a double misnomer on Great Lakes Earth, with its highest point standing 16,068.6 feet above sea level. The Spanish coastal range of Cantabria has a maximum height of 28,505 feet above sea level. The other ranges follow suit:

• Dinarides. Maximum elevation: 29,001 feet above sea level. (Unbelievably close to Everest’s current height back home!)
• Skanderbeg Mountains. Maximum elevation: 3,799 feet above sea level.
• Gennargentu, the highest peaks in the “island” of Sardinia. Maximum elevation: 19,741 feet above sea level.
• The Harz. Maximum elevation: 12,283 feet above sea level.
• MacGillycuddy’s Reeks. Maximum elevation: 11,176 feet above sea level.
• Wicklow Mountains. Maximum elevation: 9,958.1 feet above sea level.
• Mourne Mountains. Maximum elevation: 9,158 feet above sea level.
• The Sperrins. Maximum elevation: 7,295 feet above sea level.
• Jura Mountains. Maximum elevation: 18,494 feet above sea level.
• Massif Central. Maximum elevation: 20,303 feet above sea level.
• Mount Olympus. Maximum elevation: 12,487 feet above sea level.
• Owl Mountains. Maximum elevation: 10,921 feet above sea level.
• Ore Mountains. Maximum elevation: 13,388 feet above sea level.
• Pennines. Maximum elevation: 9,613.5 feet above sea level.
• Pindus. Maximum elevation: 28,387 feet above sea level.
• The Pyrenees. Maximum elevation: 14,572 feet above sea level.
• Rila. Maximum elevation: 12,521 feet above sea level.
• Rhodope Mountains. Maximum elevation: 23,582 feet above sea level.
• Sharr Mountains. Maximum elevation: 11,764 feet above sea level.
• The Scandinavian Mountains. Maximum elevation: 25,573.5 feet above sea level.
• The Scottish Highlands. Maximum elevation: 14,479 feet above sea level.
• Sierra Morena. Maximum elevation: 14,337 feet above sea level.
• The Baetic System. Maximum elevation: 14,891.6 feet above sea level.
• The Central System. Maximum elevation: 27,900 feet above sea level.
• The Iberian System. Maximum elevation: 24,900 feet above sea level.
• Sredna Gora. Maximum elevation: 17,262 feet above sea level.
• Strandzha. Maximum elevation: 11,100.6 feet above sea level.
• The Holy Cross Mountains. Maximum elevation: 6,606 feet above sea level.
• Sudetes. Maximum elevation: 17,253 feet above sea level.
• Swabian Jura. Maximum elevation: 10,925 feet above sea level.
• Serra de Tramuntana, the highest range in the Balearic “Islands”. Maximum elevation: 15,455.1 feet above sea level.
• Vogelsberg. Maximum elevation: 8,320.6 feet above sea level.
• Vosges. Maximum elevation: 15,328 feet above sea level.
• Black Mountains, Wales. Maximum elevation: 8,731.1 feet above sea level.
• Brecon Beacons. Maximum elevation: 9,538 feet above sea level.
• Snowdonia. Maximum elevation: 11,681 feet above sea level.
• Baba Mountain, North Macedonia. Maximum elevation: 27,994 feet above sea level.
• Jakupica Range. Maximum elevation: 27,318.5 feet above sea level.
• Voras Mountains. Maximum elevation: 27,169 feet above sea level.
• Kožuf Mountain. Maximum elevation: 23,370 feet above sea level.

Even the “islands” of the Mediterranean are higher than they are back home:

• Sicily, 14,251 feet above sea level.
• Sardinia, 19,740.6 feet above sea level.
• Corsica, 29,127.5 feet above sea level.
• Crete, 26,411.6 feet above sea level.
• Euboea, 18,765 feet above sea level.
• Lesbos, 10,420 feet above sea level.
• Rhodes, 13,092 feet above sea level.
• Chios, 13,959 feet above sea level.
• Kelafonia, 17,522 feet above sea level.
• Corfu, 9,749 feet above sea level.
• Lemnos, 5,046 feet above sea level.
• And so on and so forth…

Such greater heights mean that more land would get pushed upwards, which has led many within the scientific community to speculate that their uplifts had initially reduced the Mediterranean Sea, and that Africa’s northward push was merely the last straw, the final nail in the sea’s coffin. Today, on Great Lakes Earth, its lowest point, Calypso, is not 17,280 feet below sea level, but 49 feet above. This ultimately transformed the Mediterranean Sea into a large portion of what we’ve christened “The Forbidden Desert”, an arid expanse covering an area of 9.2 million square miles, almost three times the size of the Sahara back home!


The fact that the mountains of Europe are higher than they are back home is the only explanation we can think up in figuring out why modern-day Europe on Great Lakes Earth looks exactly like the Europe we used to have back in the Pleistocene. Where we’d expect to find the Irish Sea, we find instead Saint George Lake, covering an area of 6,858 square miles and a maximum depth of 275 feet.


Iceland never existed on Great Lakes Earth, but where the North American, Eurasian and African plates meet, you might find its appropriate replacement. The Azores, an island chain occupied by Portugal, may look identical to back home, but something doesn’t look right under closer inspection. A bathymetrical scan shows an Azores Plateau measuring 250,000 square miles in area, far larger than it is back home. Pico Island is still the highest in the chain, but instead of 7,713 feet above sea level, it stands only 77 feet. There is an additional island, a westward-bending boomerang shape of sheer, vertical cliff. Known as the Western Atlantis Wall, it stands 10,064 feet above sea level, though its submerged base totals it up to 25,304 feet. The eastern half of the wall is completely gone. This wall is formed when the island of Atlantis collapsed under a volcanic supereruption at the beginning of the 13th century BCEIHY (Before the Common Era in Human Years—more on that later.)


The Thule Isthmus still connects Greenland’s Gunnbjorn Mountain and Scoresby “Sound” to the Shetland “Islands”. Greenland, in turn, is far more mountainous than back home, with its highest point, Gunnbjørn Fjeld, standing in at 27,027 feet above sea level.

[Jdailey]

North America



From north to south, the differences between our North America and the North America of Great Lakes Earth are vast. Starting with the very north, the Beaufort is not a sea, nor is there a “Gulf” of Alaska. Indeed, the entire Inside Passage—spanning from Alaska to Washington—is a single coastal strip of mainland, not a labyrinth of islands. They are all extensions of the landbridge Beringia. The Aleutians are not islands, but yet even more extensions of Beringia. But the volcanoes still line up the coast, with its highest point, Mount Shishaldin, standing 12,230 feet above sea level.


Further eastward, Denali is no longer the continent’s highest peak, but it’s still higher on Great Lakes Earth than back home, standing in at 26,500 feet above sea level. The Brooks Range, standing on the opposite side of the state, are also higher on Great Lakes Earth, with Mount Isto standing in at 29,447.6 feet above sea level.


Combine the magmatic uplifts typical of the Golden Age of Granite with the activities of the Pacific being more intensive than back home, and you’d get a Canadian Arctic with higher mountains and fewer islands, if any.

• King Christian. Maximum elevation: 1,773.8 feet above sea level.
• Mackenzie King. Maximum elevation: 1,202.6 feet above sea level.
• Emerald. Maximum elevation: 3,001 feet above sea level.
• Melville. Maximum elevation: 8,202.1 feet above sea level.
• Byam Martin. Maximum elevation: 1,674 feet above sea level.
• Banks. Maximum elevation: 7,890 feet above sea level.
• Stefansson. Maximum elevation: 2,765.25 feet above sea level.
• Russell. Maximum elevation: 2,600 feet above sea level.
• Prince of Wales. Maximum elevation: 4,563 feet above sea level.
• Somerset. Maximum elevation: 5,621 feet above sea level.
• Victoria. Maximum elevation: 7,050.7 feet above sea level.
• King William. Maximum elevation: 1,520 feet above sea level.
• Ellesmere. Maximum elevation: 28,160.5 feet above sea level.
• Axel Heiberig. Maximum elevation: 23,784 feet above sea level.
• Elef Ringnes. Maximum elevation: 2,779 feet above sea level.
• Amund Ringnes. Maximum elevation: 2,850 feet above sea level.
• Cornwall. Maximum elevation: 4,225 feet above sea level.
• North Kent. Maximum elevation: 6,667 feet above sea level.
• Cornwallis. Maximum elevation: 3,865 feet above sea level.
• Devon. Maximum elevation: 20,672 feet above sea level.
• Bylot. Maximum elevation: 21,001 feet above sea level.
• Good ol’ Baffin. Maximum elevation: 23,110 feet above sea level.
• Prince Charles. Maximum elevation: 800 feet above sea level.
• Qikiqtaaluk. Maximum elevation: 3,960 feet above sea level.
• Southampton. Maximum elevation: 6,730.6 feet above sea level.
• Coats. Maximum elevation: 1,992 feet above sea level.

Consequently, such higher elevations mean that Hudson Strait and Ungava Bay don’t exist, replaced by dry land. Consequently, Hudson Bay does not exist on Great Lakes Earth. In its place, however, is a glacially carved fault lake covering 575,640 square miles of Ontario, Quebec, New York and New Jersey and plunging down to a maximum depth of 1,332 feet below sea level. Lake Saint Lawrence, as it has come to be called, is not the only big (permanent) glacially carved fault lake in the North America of Great Lakes Earth. There is also Lake Nelson, covering 159,846 square miles of Manitoba and Saskatchewan. Lake Penobscot fills in 22,300 square miles of Maine. Covering 444,403 square miles of what we’d call Minnesota, Wisconsin, Iowa, Illinois, Missouri, Indiana and Kentucky is Lake Cahokia. 269,113 square miles of what we’d call the Northwestern Territories and Alberta belong to one Yellowthroat Lake. Allegheny Lake fills up 73,136 square miles of Ohio, Pennsylvania, West Virginia and Virginia. The Lake of Snakes is called that way because it is located in where we would call the Snake River watershed, covering 99,614 square miles of Idaho, Oregon, Washington and Montana. Lake Thelon fills up 142,400 square miles of Nunavut. Lake Koksoak in northernmost Quebec measures in at 133,400 square miles. A little further south is the 97,400-square-mile Lago Grande. These lakes are located wherever thick glacial ice caps scratched on active fault lines, pushing them extra-deep.


The one glacial lake that doesn’t stand on top of an active fault system is Crane Lake. It doesn’t get any deeper than 51 feet. Despite this, it dominates what we’d call Nebraska, covering in an area of 32,784 square miles.


On Great Lakes Earth, the two most iconic mountain ranges of North America are barely hanging on, victims of erosion by millions of years of rain, snow and ice. Mount Elbert, the highest in the Rockies, is only 4,401 feet above sea level. The Appalachians no longer exist, unable to withstand 14 million years of ice ages coming and going and coming back again. The Sierra Madre Oriental is not far off, no higher than 3,700 feet above sea level. But the mountains of the Pacific, fed by more intense tectonic activity than back home, are far mightier. Mount Whitney, the highest peak in the Sierra Nevada, stands 18,926 feet above sea level. Mount Rainier, the highest of the Cascades, is 18,811 feet above sea level. The Pacific Coast Ranges stand no taller than 26,571 feet above sea level. Sierra Madre del Sur, on Mexico’s southwestern coast, stands 15,920 feet above sea level. Pico de Orizaba is a true monster, standing in at 25,236 feet above sea level. Beyond Mexico, the highest points of each “nation” are as follows:

• Guatemala. Maximum elevation: 27,471 feet above sea level.
• El Salvador. Maximum elevation: 25,631 feet above sea level.
• Belize. Maximum elevation: 23,646.4 feet above sea level.
• Honduras. Maximum elevation: 25,875.5 feet above sea level.
• Nicaragua. Maximum elevation: 26,320 feet above sea level.
• Costa Rica. Maximum elevation: 24,404 feet above sea level.
• Panama. Maximum elevation: 29,244 feet above sea level.

These massive walls are a formidable barrier against the Pacific. They are so massive that they drain their rivers down to lakes atop active fault systems that have not been carved over by glaciers. Perhaps the most notable is Lago del Colorado, covering 94,981 square miles of Colorado, Utah, Arizona and New Mexico. It, in turn, drains to a neighboring lake, Lago del Rio Grande, covering 70,348 square miles of both Texas and Mexico.


On Great Lakes Earth, the entirety of the Great Caribbean Arc is uplifted to the surface, turning the island chain into a singular land bridge connecting Venezuela and Colombia to Mexico’s Yucatán Peninsula. The Caribbean Oceanic Plateau is also dry land, 7,686 feet at the highest, uplifted by the formation of the Panama Isthmus. All that remains of the Caribbean “Sea” are the Caiman Trough and the Yucatán Basin. How is that possible? Well, unlike back home, the subduction zone never went extinct, which results in each of the following “islands” being far higher in elevation than back home.

• Cuba. Maximum elevation: 21,245.5 feet above sea level.
• Haiti. Maximum elevation: 28,850 feet above sea level.
• The Dominican Republic. Maximum elevation: 13,262 feet above sea level.
• Puerto Rico. Maximum elevation: 25,422 feet above sea level.
• Jamaica. Maximum elevation: 24,286 feet above sea level.
• The Cayman Islands. Maximum elevation: 21,386 feet above sea level.
• The Windward Islands. Maximum elevation: 26,858 feet above sea level.
• The Leeward Islands. Maximum elevation: 16,520 feet above sea level.

Back home, the Black Hills of South Dakota are impressive enough. But on Great Lakes Earth, they are even more so, standing no higher than 23,764 feet above sea level and covering an area of 13,000 square miles, extending to North Dakota and Nebraska. Similarly, the US Interior Highlands, consisting of the Ozarks and the Ouachitas, are also much bigger than back home, 9,033 feet above sea level and covering 122,000 square miles of Missouri, Arkansas, Oklahoma and Kansas.


Back home, the Atlantic Seaboard, a watershed stretching from Nova Scotia to Florida, covers an area of 277,000 square miles. The Florida Peninsula, which is two-thirds of the state, is 65,755 square miles in area. The Gulf of Mexico is 600,000 square miles of seawater. But on Great Lakes Earth, the Atlantic Seaboard is 720,000 square miles of land, the Florida Peninsula 170,304 square miles (so would it still be a peninsula?) and seawater still makes up 231,661 square miles of the Gulf of Mexico.


The Hawaiian Hotspot first formed sometime during the Cretaceous period. Back home, that mantle plume is still active, creating the current islands of the 50th United State. But on Great Lakes Earth, magma from a different corner of the Pacific had sucked that away to recreate the two formerly basaltic landmasses of Manihiki and Java-Ontong.


The mountains of the Western interior are so low in elevation that the Colorado Plateau stands from 610 to 3,960 feet above sea level. If the Grand Canyon does exist on Great Lakes Earth, it may not have been as grand as back home.

[Jdailey]

Africa



It goes without saying that North Africa is yet another extension of the Forbidden Desert. Like with Europe and the Mediterranean, the mountains are higher than they are back home.

• Aïr Mountains. Maximum elevation: 21,765.6 feet above sea level.
• Hoggar Mountains. Maximum elevation: 12,449 feet above sea level.
• Atlas Mountains. Maximum elevation: 17,814 feet above sea level.
• Tibesti Mountains. Maximum elevation: 14,619 feet above sea level.
• Adrar des Ifoghas. Maximum elevation: 9,580 feet above sea level.
• Mount Sinai. Elevation: 24,597 feet above sea level, way too high for any prophet to receive God’s Ten Commandments without dying of frostbite first.
• Mount Catherine. Elevation: 28,296 feet above sea level.
• Mount Helal. Elevation: 9,824 feet above sea level.

The East African Rift first developed back home between 25 and 22 million years ago. But on Great Lakes Earth, that never happened, so Africa on Great Lakes Earth doesn’t have Malawi, Tanganyika or Victoria. In their place, right in the middle of Central Africa is Lake Congo, covering in at 598,458 square miles in area and 720 feet below sea level at the deepest. This lake exists because it stands on top of an active fault zone. It quickly discharges into another large fault lake, this one covering all 940,000 square miles of the Chad Basin. At its deepest, this lake plunges down to 902 feet below sea level. Surrounding it are the Tassili n’Ajjer Mountains (maximum elevation: 23,228 feet above sea level), the Ennedi Plateau (maximum elevation: 15,626 feet above sea level), the Marrah Mountains (maximum elevation: 13,022 feet above sea level), the Adamawa Plateau (maximum elevation: 28,496.7 feet above sea level) and the Mandara Mountains (maximum elevation: 16,071 feet above sea level). There are also An-Nasr Lana Lake in Sudan (11,230 square miles in area and 555 feet below sea level at the deepest) and Lake Nxai in Botswana (275,000 square miles in area and 100 feet below sea level at the deepest).


The Horn of Africa, like so many of Great Lakes Earth’s mountains, has been uplifted as a result of magmatic push. Djibouti’s highest point is 21,832 feet above sea level. Eritrea, 19,378 feet. Ethiopia, 20,852 feet. Somalia, 26,479 feet. Further down south, the Great Escarpment, which includes the Drakensberg, is far higher, too, with Thabana Ntlenyana standing 23,622 feet above sea level.


Off the coast of Namibia stands the lightning-bolt-shaped Walvis Peninsula, uplifted when magma transformed its basaltic rock into granite. Almost 2,000 miles in length, it covers an area of 280,000 square miles and can get as high as 2,573 feet above sea level. On the opposite side stands the island of Agulhas, 310 miles south of South Africa, 120,000 square miles in area and standing no higher than 2,500 feet above sea level. But Africa’s most noticeable contribution to the Golden Age of Granite is Madagascar itself. Back home, it measures in at 587,041 square kilometers, or 226,658 square miles. But that’s literally the tip of the iceberg, the whole of it being actually 1,140,000 square kilometers, or 440,156.5 square miles. On Great Lakes Earth, 99.7% of that larger size is exposed above the surface, and Maromokotro, the island’s highest point, stands 21,270 feet above sea level.


Because India is moving at a slower speed than back home, thus resulting in a different location, less than 250 miles of seawater separate Greater Madagascar from the boomerang-shaped Mascarene Island. Its history is similar to back home, its northern half being far older and more granitic than its southern half. However, on Great Lakes Earth, 99.2% of its 115,831-square-mile area is land, its highest point standing 22,880 feet above sea level.

[WoodytheClimateGuy]

Hey Jdailey! Its nice to see you are back and working on the Great Lakes Earth. I've Always been a big fan of it and I hope to see this work evolve more than it already has!