@nd attempt at world creation

[Stìophan]

Hi guys, hope you all had a good festive period etc.

Since my 1st attempt at my fictional world of Xeon herehttps://www.cartographersguild.com/s...t=49749&page=2 I have been doing a lot of playing about on GPlates so decided to give it another bash, so here's my latest attempt, as always, any critique and advice would be most welcome.

Xeon Master-01_small.png

[Tiluchi]

Hi Stiophan,

Always great to see some more tectonics work here! I always wonder if there shouldn't be some sort of separate forum for those of us doing this ground-up stuff from tectonics onward, although perhaps it's not necessary as not many are crazy enough to try!

Overall this looks mostly fine, and your plate boundaries look good when I look at them on a globe which is always a plus. If I have one general critique it's that the subduction zones appear to be quite far removed from the continental shelf in general, when in reality they tend to be located close to the edge of continents, where oceanic crust plunges beneath continental crust (the main exception on Earth is the southwestern margin of the Pacific Plate, where New Zealand, Fiji, and the New Hebrides all rifted off of Australia relatively recently). Some examples of this include the southeastern margin of your Koryyn'a Plate, the northern margin of the Qashqavand Plate, and most of the subductive margin of the Marazaeth Plate. For many of those I'd recommend having at least some microcontinents closer to the plate boundary (think New Zealand or New Guinea), or moving the plate boundary closer to the continent.

Another thing that seems iffy is the several examples of triple junctions that have a rift meeting a subduction zone. At least on Earth this doesn't seem to happen often, especially not in the middle of the ocean. I suspect that it's not really a stable boundary, as weird things happen when a mid-continent ridge is subducted. Annoyingly enough this boundary tends to pop up quite frequently when you're working on your tectonic history in GPlates (as I suspect you are), and I'm in the middle of re-doing my tectonics partly to get rid of this. I suspect that part of this is that plate boundaries tend to shift more than we think they do so it's necessary to continually update your margins to reflect this. Of course this isn't necessary and I think everything here is technically possible, so feel free to ignore any of this!

[Stìophan]

Hi Tiluchi,

Thanks very much for the feedback, I do think you have a point in having a separate forum for tectonic based mapping, maybe splitting Regional/World mapping into two, tectonic and non-tectonic based?

I must admit after having looked at it with fresher eyes I do see what you mean, especially regarding the triple junctions! I think I will move the subduction zones nearer the plate boundaries, and looking at them again probably the one at the southern edge of Dhearqa is probably the most authentic. Although I might well do a New Guinea style microcontinent yet, or another option I suppose would be to add a southern continent on the Marazaeth plate, although that would mean changing the name (which is no hardship) as Marazaeth means 'Southern Ocean' lol.

Again many thanks for your feedback,

[Stìophan]

Ok so based on advice by Tiluchi above, I have made some amendments to the map, so here's the latest version:

Xeon Master-01.1_small.png

Again any feedback would be appreciated as always

[Tiluchi]

Looks great overall! Is this the "modern-day" tectonic arrangement now? Excited to see what comes next.

I think a southern continent on the Marazaeth Plate is a great idea, and you don't even necessarily need to change the name- considering how long it took us to discover Antarctica (and considering the ocean there is sometimes called the Antarctic Ocean), it wouldn't be that much of a stretch to have that area named after the body of water, especially if that body of water was already named before the continent itself was known.

[Stìophan]

The current timescale is 10mya after the Supercontinent started rifting apart based on GPlates. After realigning the boundaries I think a southern continent is definitely needed as the Marazaeth plate looks so vast.

The next step I guess will be to look into other land forming factors such as tides and climate then work out stuff like orogenies etc. I'm very inspired by Vorropahaiah's Atlas Elyden maps so that's the style I'm aiming for but I'm way less experienced so we shall see.

My place names are derived from Scottish Gaelic (my 2nd language) reworked using a few algorithms/sound changes I created, so my side project is doing a Glossary of place names for use in the map. I'm under no illusion that it's a big project, so I'm just going to see how it goes.

Many thanks for your feedback again

[Stìophan]

I have now added a southern continent to the map to fill in the massive gap at the bottom:

Xeon Master-01.2_small.png

Again any feedback would be much appreciated folks

[WoodytheClimateGuy]

Xeon Master-01.2_small (Currents) (Image).png

Ocean currents, done! It looks like the southern continent, Zaethyr, will have a cold circumpolar current (alliteration ftw), with some of the cold currents going back up alongside Qashqavand to join the equatorial currents, and thus warm back up. I have one concern though. In our Earth, when currents go west, depending on the shape of the coast and the Coriolis Effect at about 30 degrees for the Westerlies and about 60 degrees for the Easterlies, the currents will go more upward to about 45 degrees for the Westerlies and 70 degrees for the westerlies. This is why the Gulf Stream happens. Because of the shape of the coast of North America, the currents accelerate more, like a skateboard.

Here's a Wikipedia article about Western Intensification: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boundary_current

The main question is, will the warm current flowing Xaron'a make a Gulf Stream like current? I don't think so. It's been great making this map and I was actually going to draw more complex currents, like the individual lines, but I realized it wasn't necessary and went for a simpler style.

Red: Warm Currents
Blue: Cold Currents

[Stìophan]

That looks absolutely awesome Woody, many thanks indeed. I'm revisiting the tectonic situation on my old map at the moment, to see if I can get the landmasses to be a bit more believable, just to see which one I prefer. I started the bathymetry in the one above but my copy of Illustrator started throwing error messages at me so I'm in hiatus at the moment. But I love what you have done there. Will the currents have much affect on the shape of the coastlines?

[Stìophan]

Hey guys, so I have decided to change my southern continent a bit as I decided I didn't want it totally in the south and decided to rename some of the continents as they were hangovers from my first attempt. Any advice on my map would be welcome.
Xeon Master-02.2.0_small.jpg