Placement and Biomes

[Hikki-Jin]

All right, hopefully this is the right section. This is one of my first maps (not counting rough doodles from years ago). It's the northern half of a continent, in the northern hemisphere. For simplicity the planet's size, gravity, orbit, physics, etc is all comparable to Earth. The dark brown lines and squiggles are roughly where mountains are planned to be.

Anyway, I have two questions:

1) Is the placement of the mountains, rivers, and lakes geographically accurate thus far? Is there anything else that looks out of place in that regard?
2) If the answer to the first question is "yes" (or won't require any significant changes) then advice on the biomes would be greatly appreciated. The southwestern area, ringed by mountains as it is, I imagine to be primarily a hot desert. I see the northern islands and mountains as being cold.

[Guldaroth]

Hi there !

In my opinion, it is quite difficult to say if you placed your mountains right since there is no tectonic map of your planet. This being said, it seems your lake placement isn't that bad. An identical problem appears there also: in order to approach reality, you need to describe the geology (the hardness of the soil will help you know if your river will flow straight to the ocean or zigzag to it). Then you need to establish the general climate of all your regions to know more precisely the yearly rainfall of each of them. Note that rainfall is largely influenced by your relief.
With it you can easily place your biomes just as those. Finally, I would trace the major drainage basins (or freshwater biomes) based on your relief to know a little bit more about in which direction your major rivers should flow. (For example your projected southern desert would probably be an endorheic zone)

This would be my method but it might be a bit pseudo-scientific. Hope this helps !

Cheers !