Mapping an Earthlike planet

[Pixie]

I agree with ascanius 100%. You either make that area an old plateau (meaning you lower it) or you make it more north-south oriented.

[Akubra]

Thanks a lot to all for the feedback!

I have adapted the map according to the suggestions of Pixie and ascanius. For easier comparison with the map Pixie mentioned (this one) I also modified the colours for the different elevation ranges.
- blue: < 1500 m.
- light blue : 1500 - 3000 m.
- green : 3000 - 4500 m.
- yellow : 4500 - 6000 m.
- orange : 6000 - 7500 m.
- red : > 7500 m.

Rautah_Height_V2.png

These are the changes I made:

I'd prolong the land in the boundary between Sira and Lomo plates.

Done. It was a good idea to create a peninsula on the inside of Sira, instead of the islands I had there. The southern tip of those mountains ending in a bay were indeed a bit awkward.

The only one I think less plausible is the coastal range in Arumanthi.

Good point. I tried different things with it, but in the end I just deleted it, because nothing ended up the way I liked. I did widen the continental shelf and created some islands on it.

You have way too much land above 2000/3000 m.

I was afraid it would turn out that way. Depending on the mountain range I worked on I did one or more of the following things to fix this:
- Flattening ranges by removing an elevation colour and lowering the next ones up (if there were any)
- Making old ranges smaller by a given percentage or redrawing parts as to have them cover a smaller area
- Placing old ranges farther from the coast than their original position. (I know this doesn't lower the land, but it creates a smoother topography more in line with the erosion forces)

The lakes between Ghaon and Yama would be in elevated land. Whenever you get a divergent boundary inland, the rise of magma forces the ground to lift. If you look at Earth, the great rift in Africa is surrounded by highlands.

They would be indeed, but their surface elevation would probably not be higher than 1500 m., which places them within my lowest elevation range (blue). I checked the African Rift Valley lakes and all the main ones lie under 1500 m. There are lakes that are higher, but they are smaller (a few 10s to a few 100s of km²). The smallest lake that you can distinguish on my map has an area of several 1000s of km². I did change this zone a bit by creating more elevated land over 1500 m. alongside and in between the lakes.

I can sea some oceanic islands in Taikaram and Akua plates being great for early navigators/explorers.

I did place one there. Two other islands lie between East Nohhon and Eneaga and on the tripoint where Onuskia, Lomo and Nohali meet. I'm not yet sure if I will *have* early navigators/explorers in the traditional sense. I'm envisaging Rautah to be discovered and colonized by future space-travelling humans from Earth, and they will have far more advanced technology than seafarers we have known on our planet. But as said, all that is not yet written in stone. The way it goes could be completely different...

Now if your going for something like the Tibetan plateau it seems that that range should be wider and spread more along the length of the range instead of narrow and extruding from the range.

You either make that area an old plateau (meaning you lower it) or you make it more north-south oriented.

I was wondering about that plateau too. I didn't know if it could exist in that shape or not. You're both right of course. But it's a bit of a dilemma for me. On the one hand I want a very large plateau, and on the other hand I want it to be high. So I decided to have a bit of both by downsizing the high eastern half and make it more elongated and lowering the western half to make it some sort of extention of the old northern range. Would that be a possible solution?

Like I said in one of my previous posts, I would like to have a huge lake too. I placed it in that area because I figured it could have formed in a depression and function as a catchment area for the many rivers coming from the plateau and the range to its west. Would such a lake be plausible? And would it be able to have a big river carrying its outflow to the ocean?

Cheers - Akubra