Geological Landmark Orientation Consistencies

[Chick]

You are asking so many geology questions, may I humbly suggest that you go to your local university and take a class in geology 101. In just one class, you would learn so much of this to a level that you could make all the cartographic decisions you need in very realistic ways.

[waldronate]

The most important consideration for useful deposits of geologic materials is not as much the current state of the system, but rather the past state. The huge gold deposits in the deep South African mines, for example, are ancient placer deposits that have been buried under kilometers of material that has become rock. The current climate of an area has little bearing on recoverable geologic materials (the Alaskan Gold Rush, for example, was in an extremely cold area, there are many mineral riches to be found in the relatively arid American Southwest, and there is currently a lot of placer mining happening the Amazonian forests). If your world has races and creatures that move easily through subterranean areas, then you will likely find that you can get a large increase in available riches without any significant difference in geological systems just because of easier access.

Consider your desert covered in sand. Where did that sand come from? Here on Earth, it came from erosion of long-gone mountain ranges in a moist environment that has since become arid. There are ancient (and dry) river channels under the Sahara desert that contain some amounts of recoverable materials. However, the cost of recovering that material is generally more than the cost of recovering material in more accessible places; thus, those materials remain largely unexploited.

The fun thing about geology is that there is always a little blob of fantastically rich stuff in strange places. You can write pretty much any story and devise plausible geology to support said story. Just make sure that water flow downhill and erosion happens and you'll be fine.

[Tomas L.]

There isn't a university where I live, and to my knowledge, the community college doesn't offer geology. And even if it did, it's one of the worst community colleges in the state. My apologies for asking so many questions. I'm just a curious mind. I'll resort to the form of study I have become very familiar with. No matter how much digging I must engage in, I'll scour the reliable sites on the internet for my answers. And I'll do my best to better select the most pressing of questions in the future.

[Tomas L.]

That response has helped me tremendously by clearing a lot of my questions up on the minerals and valuable resources. As long as the history is justified practically, and the consistencies remain that way, I have quite a bit more freedom than I originally thought I had with the earth's resources. I'm beginning to see more come together. Thank you for the help, waldronate.

[waldronate]

As usual, the hardest part of these questions is knowing what to look for. A good overall search term for how the geological world works in a very rough way is "physical geography". A term for finding out where various ores are located (and how they form) is "distribution of ores", as long as you disallow all of the minecraft and dwarf fortress references. "origins of minerals" has some interesting hits.

Critical resources that people often forget are wood (of various types) and water (especially navigable rivers). The right kinds of wood can be very valuable and can effectively be "mined". For example, the early US fleet of Navy ships was built of a specific kind of old-growth oak tree. This wood was incredibly resilient and hard, but the trees grow so slowly that they are effectively a non-renewable resource on human time scales. The availability of this wood in fairly large quantity contributed greatly to early US Navy supremacy. You may have heard historical references to "the cedars of Lebanon", a type of tree native to the middle east that was excellent for making buildings and boats. The population was mined to economic irrelevance, and the habitat pretty much made non-viable for the trees to recover. Simple herbs may also be very valuable. In addition to the traditional smelly herbs, there are many area-specific and climate-specific plants that are economically important. The Romans drove a particular kind of plant, silphium, to extinction because it was a good abortifacient that couldn't be cultivated. The crocus (source of saffron, a colorant and spice), coffee, vanilla, chocolate, and tulip plants were also plants that were carefully controlled and are native to a relatively small area. Even insects may be of particular value (e.g. the silkworm for making silk, the lac insect for making shellac, and the various insects used to produce red dyes like cochineal). There is also that king of critters, the murex snail in the Mediterranean that's responsible for Tyrian purple, the class color of kings (the city of Tyre's wealth was founded on the back of that critter and on a great location for trading it).

Lots of resources other than basic minerals out there and the non-mineral ones are usually far more picky than the mineral ones about the current conditions.

[Tomas L.]

So it would be best for me to compile the most significant of resources and research where and how they occur. I'll be sure to refer to sources that discuss those topics in depth.

Some very intriguing topics of interest. I wouldn't have thought those particular resources' occurrences would have been more confining than the mineral based ones. You learn something everyday, I guess. I'm realizing I have a lot of items to think about, and refer to information that explains their origins and regularities. Trade and commerce is an important part of the story, so as much of this I can utilize will be extremely beneficial to that element. Thank you for sharing these points of interest with me. I'll be sure to study them closely to better mold the resources the regions hold.

[waldronate]

One beautiful example of a limitation of environment is the distribution of the bristlecone pine tree in California's White mountains ("the oldest living things on Earth": trees that grow tiny amounts and that have little strips of bark that live for thousands of years). It grows only on certain sloping and very poor limestone soils that won't support much in the way of competition. If you see the bristlecone forests, they have these very hard edges where their preferred soil stops; it's a bizarre layout when you first see it ( https://www.google.com/maps/place/An...aa372ddf9fd0b9 ).

[Tomas L.]

Whoa. I haven't seen a tree that looks like that before. Very unique to say the least. You've succeeded in making me want to put much more focused effort on the finer details of the world I'm trying to create. The global layout concept has come far. Now it's time for me to look locally and develop a more specific setting for the various ecosystems.