Jdailey's Great Lakes Earth World Map Challenge

[Falconius]

You know there is a general reason challenges are set up the way they are. You say this is a challenge, so OK, what are the rules to the challenge? What is the reward? What is the time frame of the challenge? How will the challenge be judged? Since you are running it, perhaps tell a little about yourself, your experience in relevant fields, your connections etc. Also you need to market your challenge a little. What makes doing your challenge more worthwhile than doing a guild challenge? Or doing an Artstation challenge? Or any other challenge out there (there are actually quite a few)?

And the last point, which is all I really wanted to get to was this: There is a reason challenges are generally given a direction, but left open ended, and that is they are generally geared towards encouraging creativity and exciting the artists who join in. Yours is way too specific to generate much interest from people who want to compete. And also it is of immense scale and time consumption, most challenges try to limit both of those things.

[ThomasR]

Hi Jdailey, it's thomrey from deviant art. I'll barge in just for a little advice. As our previous exchange shown it, you really need to clarify your demand. And, judging from the emails we exchanged, you also need to change [Other] to [Paid] because that's a tedious work you're asking for (I'm talking about the part you left out).

[Jdailey]

Hi Jdailey, it's thomrey from deviant art. I'll barge in just for a little advice. As our previous exchange shown it, you really need to clarify your demand. And, judging from the emails we exchanged, you also need to change [Other] to [Paid] because that's a tedious work you're asking for (I'm talking about the part you left out).

Why "Paid"?

[ThomasR]

When you contacted me through deviant art, we discussed about a quote on the project, that's why. Have you changed your mind and want people to do the job for free ?

[Jdailey]

I never changed my mind.

[Mouse]

Forgive me for interrupting, once again, but you do seem to be giving a lot of mixed messages!

Perhaps it would be better to take some time to fully explain the history of this project - why you started it, what you are really trying to achieve, where you've been with it so far (different sites and forums)... etc.... so that no one is in any doubt about what you want, and what you are (or are not, as the case may be) prepared to pay for the work, which from what I can gather is an awful lot of work on the part of the cartographer

It might also help if you can tell us if you have anyone else already working on the project. Do you?

I mean - its all so vague and muddly that it would have to be a fairly brave cartographer to just plunge in and get started with no further questions asked, and no clear idea of what the outcome is - paid or unpaid, single or multiple contract, one or many cartographers involved - that sort of thing

[Jdailey]

Since its four and a half billion year history, the face of planet Earth had been constantly changing. Textbook examples—like Rodinia, Pangaea, Laurasia and Gondwana—are features of what happened. These are broad examples of history, the knowledge of what really happened. But for a while, there is a genre of its own right, alternate history, the knowledge of what would have happened had the greatest moments in history taken the other direction. Scholars had long speculated on how the big things in human history would have changed, like what would happen if America lost the Revolutionary War, or if the South won the Civil War.

I have read a few alternate history scenarios myself, but they all have one thing in common, for me, at least—Earth is still the Earth we recognize.

In my neverending strive for original directions in already-told stories, my mind buzzes with the one strategy of alternate history that hasn’t been used either before or often—I don’t alter history without altering the Earth first. How would the climate be affected if we arrange the continents to a different place or a different shape, and how would that alter the course of human history? That’s a question that I’ve been asking and answering myself since 2012, when I first started creating an altogether alternate Earth—Great Lakes Earth, the one that I crafted for us humans.

Even so, I’ve been changing and rechanging Great Lakes Earth over and over as I follow the advice of my Earth Science teacher, who’d given me sound advice on which landmarks to alternate and why. For example, I’d once cut the height of the Rocky Mountains by half because I understood that the Rockies played a part in the creation of Tornado Alley, and having experienced a few close calls in my lifetime back home in South Sioux City, Nebraska, I wanted to live in a Nebraska where I wouldn’t worry a thing about that spiral of death. However, by reducing the height of the Rockies, I’ve also demoted the Great Plains into a continental desert, so I continued on looking for ways to put northeastern Nebraska off Tornado Alley without sacrificing the Midwest’s prairire fertility.

I grew up with maps all my life. I’ve read and reread a few atlas books to understand the world beyond South Sioux, and they give me an opportunity to alter the Earth. It’s not just the maps of today that fascinate me. As a big fanatic on lots of things prehistoric, I’ve paid attention to the different faces of the continents over the millions of years of life’s history. For Great Lakes Earth, I’ve looked up the maps of the latter half of the Cenozoic era because they were the most familiar to the 21st century, and this gives me the chance to decide whichever prehistoric landmark to revive, like the great lakes of Bonneville or Lahontan in western North America or the Tethys Sea in the Old World.

I am an avid lover of all things natural, whether they be now or then. The Badlands of South Dakota were a barren labyrinth of jagged sandstone, yet they hid a vast treasure trove of fossils. The Black Hills, a labyrinth of solid granite carpeted by vast forests and prairies, always take my breath away and provide me words to describe them too vast to post here. Nature is one thing that we are currently fighting to protect at a desperate rate, as fossil fuels continue to dictate our way of life. That is the main reason why I created Great Lakes Earth—to provide an Earth that, if it ever did suffer the same environmental crises as today, at least the consequences would be less severe. As I craft this alternate planet, I use my best knowledge of geography, geology and many factors of climate, like the law of albedo, into place. By rearranging the landmasses in the Arctic, not only have I provided additional summer pitstops for the polar bears, I might’ve also put on more ice, which means a cooler climate, which means the effects of carbon pollution would be slowed down before nature’s next major payback. By turning certain basins and depressions into water, I’ve not only brought on the potential for a more diverse environment, I might also have solved the problem for drought-stricken parts of the world.

The questions of “what if” fill my mind in the past few years, and Great Lakes Earth seems to provide the perfect alternative. There are plenty more moments of alternate history for me to think up, and they are tied with how I change the face of the Earth. Whether the logic behind these changes that I’ve crafted is sound, I’m still trying to figure it out. If not, then I have the opportunity to recraft it once more.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~~~~~~

One of our current environmental crises is desertification, as manmade climate change is turning fertile habitats into more arid wastelands. If there is one natural habitat that I can not stand, it’s deserts. The idea of living months in intense heat and with little to no water is more than enough to make me feel ill. Yet, in Earth’s recent history, these deserts were more favorable places full of water. Lakes Bonneville and Lahontan were among dozens of great lakes that made the Wild West a verdant Eden as recently as 20,000 years ago. In Africa, the seasonally-verdant Okovango Delta, the Nxai, Sua and Nwetwe salt pans, Lakes Ngami and Xau and the Mababe Depression all used to be Lake Makgadikgadi, a lake 50,000 square miles in area and 100 feet deep that vanished as recently as 10,000 years ago. North of the equator, North Africa had its share of great lakes, too, but they vanished as recently as eight to seven thousand years ago, turning the Sahara into the largest and hottest desert on the planet. Australia’s Lake Eyre basin was at its peak 60 million years ago before becoming the arid depression we’d recognize today. Would the Sahara, Kalahari, Mojave and Outback still be deserts if those great lakes of the past persist into the 21st century?

A similar problem I have with desertification is salt lake or closed basins, which would have a high enough rate of evaporation to become overly salty. Places like the Dead Sea, Lake Mono or the Great Salt Lake bug me because the water is still liquid, but its salinity content is too high to be considered drinkable, which really irks me because water regulates climate and water draws all forms of life to drink and cool down. For closed basins, I look back to history and recall the Tethys Sea, which connected Asia to the Atlantic. This becomes key to the birth of Great Lakes Earth’s civilization.

Portugal is left untouched, as the Prime Meridian is also known as the Greenwich Meridian. This, to me, strikes me as stopping before reaching all the way through — in this case, Lisbon, Europe’s westernmost city.

The connection between North America and Asia via the Bering Land Bridge has been an on-again, off-again process. Troödontids, ceratopsians, hadrosaurs and tyrannosaurs originated in Asia before colonizing North America. 55 million years ago, at the start of the Eocene, mammals from Asia migrated to North America. That same story would be repeated 20 million years ago, during the Miocene. And again, hundreds of thousands of years ago during the Pleistocene. The bridge is currently underwater, and this creates a frustrating degree of ecological distinction — in the Old World, pigs, vultures, Old World sparrows, hyenas and antelopes; in the New World, pumas, peccaries, condors, New World sparrows and pronghorns.

But by widening the Atlantic, Beringia would be open on permanent business, creating more homogenized ecosystems.

[Mouse]

Fair enough, and to keep my own comment relatively short, a great explanation of the thinking behind the project. But I was hoping you would explain the confusion over the fact that some of us seem to have come across this project before now in different places, and spent some considerable time already trying to help you work this out.

I am really sorry about this, but a sizeable project like mapping an entire alternative world (if that's what this is), is something that only the rich would be able to do without any kind of payment - unless of course you are hoping to enthuse someone with a similar passion to your own, whereby it becomes a hobby more than a job?

If you don't mind me saying so - I think that this is unlikely to happen. Most of the cartographers here who do commission work, do it partly for the pleasure, but also in many cases to pay the household bills and put food on the table, so even if you are lucky enough to infect a couple with your enthusiasm, it would still be somewhat unrealistic to expect an arrangement whereby you get all this mapping done totally free of charge.

I mean you might find someone... but its not a very realistic hope to cling to.

I'm really sorry, but most of us have just as many bills to pay as you do - or the head of your household if not you.

[Voolf]

I will be blunt.

You are imposing your project to people like a blessing they should embrace and take. Probably most finds your first post little rude. I have seen you also did that request on deviantart, as well as probably some other page (Azelor mentioned it).

You answers are chaotic and dosen't answer the very core of the problems we ask.

If you want people to do it for free - and i think you do - at leat be humble in your request.

[Falconius]

Or just be straight forward at least.