WIP Ulthui - How are my rivers?

[ascanius]

@ Sarithus. I think Chick is talking about the red river.
Also I took look at the map of middle earth, didn't notice the link before. If you look closely you see that the river in the north west is a confluence of multiple rivers coming from the mountains. The other river could be similar or it could be an outflow that goes to the ocean or the sea, we cant really know because it isn't shown. I bet though that it is actually a river running towards the lake. The way I think about rivers is the cardiovascular system. Basically rivers are like the capillaries of the veins they are small at first then the join together getting bigger then those join together becoming the veins.

[Chick]

Here is your map with some comments on the rivers, hope it's more clear this way.

ZZC9ZQWl with Chick comments.jpg

As for pet peeves, one of mine is that just because one person ignorantly did it wrong doesn't mean everyone else should feel free to do the same. Being a good artist does not make you good at geography or geology. Being good at geology doesn't make you a good cartographer or artist (I'm proof of that ).

So kudos to everyone who makes the effort to find out, to understand, and to do it right

[Sarithus]

Here is your map with some comments on the rivers, hope it's more clear this way.

ZZC9ZQWl with Chick comments.jpg

As for pet peeves, one of mine is that just because one person ignorantly did it wrong doesn't mean everyone else should feel free to do the same. Being a good artist does not make you good at geography or geology. Being good at geology doesn't make you a good cartographer or artist (I'm proof of that ).

So kudos to everyone who makes the effort to find out, to understand, and to do it right

I did the red one on purpose as I said just to clarify that it was wrong.

Must there always be an outflow from a lake? Tolkien confuses me a bit here as the Sea of Nurnen (lake?) has multiple outflows which I've been told isn't right. There's also no outflow from the Sea of Rhun.

http://blog.lefigaro.fr/hightech/middle-earth-map.jpg

[Chick]

There are lots of famous maps that have it wrong. If I recall, Terry Brook's Shannara was another example that had the rivers completely weird. If we ever get our search function back, I'll try to find that thread for you.

If you want yours to be right, then yes, you need one and only one outflow from each lake.

There is an exception, called a Closed Sea, in which the evaporation exactly matches the inflow, and the lake never fills enough to flow out, but it still has a lowest point that would be the outflow if there were enough water. The Great Salt Lake and the Dead Sea are examples of this. These are actually extremely rare and require special circumstances to occur, and they persist only for as long as the conditions are right.

[Deadshade]

Must there always be an outflow from a lake? Tolkien confuses me a bit here as the Sea of Nurnen (lake?) has multiple outflows which I've been told isn't right. There's also no outflow from the Sea of Rhun.

Yes there must in the general case. There may be some rare transitory exceptions like Chick said.
But your comment shows what your problem is - you don't visualise how the water flows and that's why you confuse INlets and OUTlets. INlet means that the rivers flows IN the lake. OUTlet means that the river flows OUT of the lake.
So the Sea of Nurnen has not multiple OUTlets (what is impossible) but multiple INlets what is the rule.

Actually the problem is that there is no outlet. From that you can deduce that Mordor is probably very hot, that the rivers flowing in the Nurnen Sea are probably not permanent and that the evaporation is very high. It is only a matter of time till the Sea of Nurnen practically dries out. Stays the mystery of its origin - glaciations being ruled out, where did all this water come from ?

Same comment for the Rhun. No outlet is showed. But here as it is on the border of the map, it is not excluded that there is an outlet going to east but no cartographer ever went there.

As the eastern parts of Middle Earth are neither described, not mapped, one could speculate that both Nurnen and Rhun are remains of an ancient ocean that has been cut-off by some long ago cataclysmic event in the far east.

[tolcreator]

Heh, just mentioned Endorheic basins in another thread...
Southern mordor is dry and hot, and surrounded by mountains, so Nurnen could be very like the Great Salt Lake in Utah.
Eastern middle earth is a big wide steppe, and in real world earth, what do we find in the big wide step but the Caspian Sea and the Aral Sea, two inland seas with no outlet.
I'm pretty sure Nurnen is supposed to evoke a salt lake like that in Utah, and Rhun is supposed to evoke the Aral Sea (it's more like the Aral than the Caspian).