WIP scalable Map of Continent - a source for stories and maps

[randigpanzrall]

Hi Gumboot,

you´re absolutely right, the clima settings of my planet will differ from the earth´s. The influences of wind and sea currents are very large and in the south of my planet, the cold currents can flow quite good, even a little bit better than on earth. Wellington for example or New Zealand generally is influenced by cold sea currents while at Porto, there are the warm currents. There are lots of things I´ll have to pass through, until I have a kind of logic clima and in fact, when my planet has a comparable sun to ours and when it has some similar distance to the sun and comparable size, it would be colder than our world maybe, maybe it´s even closer to a glacial period and withot global warming... I will talk to a geograph in some weeks and maybee he´ll take a look at my planet. Thank you so far for your excellent remarks.

[Eilathen]

A very interesting project. I really like the worldmap...cool continental shapes. Looking forward to more.
Have some Rep.!

[Azélor]

As far as climate, the one thing that strikes me is that there's very little land mass, particularly in the south. That has a pretty significant affect on global climate, lowering temperatures. Even on earth the southern hemisphere is notably colder than the north because of this. Bear in mind that many climate maps of the world end at the southern tip of South America, but in the north extend all the way to the North Pole. That's quite a distortion; Cape Horn is at 56 S; a lower latitude than most of Russia, all of Scandanavia, Greenland, Alaska, and half of Canada. As a result it conceals the off-centre position of the climate zones.

Compare, for example, the climate of Porto (Portugal) and Wellington (NZ). Both are coastal cities, and both at about the same latitude, but their climates are hugely different.

And most maps use the mercator projection meaning that Groenland in as big as Africa while it's something like 3 or 4 times smaller. But here, it should not be a problem.

[randigpanzrall]

And now for water currents - my first ideas

sea currants.jpg

There are two specialities influencing the currents:

01 The Tudora´ Aomaly, which was a relict of the sunken continent of Tudora´. Here are some majaor islands together with thousands of little islands and the water depht is from a few cm to several meters

02 The Breach, which was a breakthrough through the middle continent, once shrewd by the gods of light to protect mankind on the continent from the dark hordes and the Renegade-Gods, it´s from 20 to 50 km wide and with deep water.

I´m not pretty sure whether my ideas were correct so please feel free to comment

[Gumboot]

And now for water currents - my first ideas

sea currants.jpg

There are two specialities influencing the currents:

01 The Tudora´ Aomaly, which was a relict of the sunken continent of Tudora´. Here are some majaor islands together with thousands of little islands and the water depht is from a few cm to several meters

02 The Breach, which was a breakthrough through the middle continent, once shrewd by the gods of light to protect mankind on the continent from the dark hordes and the Renegade-Gods, it´s from 20 to 50 km wide and with deep water.

I´m not pretty sure whether my ideas were correct so please feel free to comment

Looks pretty good to me, I only really have one point;

I think you should consider a three-grade colour system for better illustration of the currents; warm, cold, and neutral. The classification doesn't so much relate to whether the water is warm or not, but how the temperature of the current relates to the temperature of the water around it. So all east-west currents should be neutral, all currents away from the equator should be warm, and all currents towards the equator should be cold. Currently you have warm and cold currents in all three directions.

Like this map:

File:Corrientes-oceanicas.gif - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

So if we take one example current; your southern equatorial current, starting at the eastern side of the map, it should be black as it heads across the big ocean, then when it hits the continent that's kind of like Australia it should go red as it curves away south until it meets your circumpolar current in the south which should again be black, back out across the map to the east and back in on the far side where it turns blue as it curves north up the coast of that long skinny island until it joins the southern equatorial current and returns to black again for its return across the big ocean.

Older current maps for earth use the two colours but for me it misrepresents the currents, for example as your current comes down the east coast of "Australia" it turns from warm to cold, but the current is still going to be warmer than the seas it is coming into so it should really still be a "warm" current.

[randigpanzrall]

Well Gumboot,

thank you for your comment.

You´re right, of cause there are warmer cold and colder warm currents, but to choose a three-grade-system won´t change the things too much I think. There is even one question, why not to mark the equatorial currents as warm currents, when they are in fact warm. I think, both versions will do so far and in order to create the clima zones for my planet, my version will do, I hope. (As far as my current scenario is not wrong itself)

[Gumboot]

Well Gumboot,

thank you for your comment.

You´re right, of cause there are warmer cold and colder warm currents, but to choose a three-grade-system won´t change the things too much I think. There is even one question, why not to mark the equatorial currents as warm currents, when they are in fact warm. I think, both versions will do so far and in order to create the clima zones for my planet, my version will do, I hope. (As far as my current scenario is not wrong itself)

Of course, it doesn't really fundamentally change anything, it's purely a case of how the information is displayed.

[Korash]

I just saw this. Great work. Reppable even.

I do have a question though. At first I thought that the red lines were roads, bringing certain points to mind, but looking at the earlier maps posted I am no longer sure that is the case. If they are indeed roads, looking at the "Britain" map, I think that there are too many crisscrossing the mountains, with one ON the ridge line of the mountains.I would think that the roads would follow the river systems much as they could. Given that I believe that there would be 1 road going from NW to SW with others branching off when the rivers get close to the main road. There should be many more roads on the lower elevations that the higher ones. Please ignore the above if they are NOT roads, but some clarification would be appreciated.

[randigpanzrall]

Hi korash,

The red lines are indeed the provincial borders of this kingdom. They are not fix for the moment but this island is a kingdom which subdivides into several provinces or Shires. The roads and other labbelings were not yet ready..

[randigpanzrall]

tectonics.jpg

And now on tectonics.

You can see, how the world is divided into tectonic plates and of course they have a strong influence in Volcanoes an Earthquakes. Especially the mid-western Archiples, which are in fact left-overs of an early continent, are heavily influenced on tectonic movements. In the North, where the Gods of Light created "The Breach" by cutting through the middle continent, they forced the northernmost plate to turn about 100 km or so into the north-eastern direction. As you can imagine, this didn´t left the world unharmed and it last about three centuries or more to cure the flora and fauna and to make the world and the continent a place to live again.

Feel free to comment