Eormana - New World, Mountain Placement

[Aduym]

Hi, all,

I'm curious to hear thoughts, suggestions, critiques, etc. on the placement of the continents and mountains on my burgeoning world here. The world is, obviously, hardly finished. I'm trying to keep it as realistic as I can, but am open to some degree of "fantastic" geography. Right now, I'm not confident in my understanding of tectonics and primarily unsure where mountains would make sense on the large, blank landmass...either along the southern and/or eastern shore would be my guess. Looking forward to any input.

Thanks!

[Chick]

This looks quite good. Your mountains are well placed, although they look a bit big if those are continent sized landmasses.

Since the bay separating the northern land areas looks a lot like a spreading center, I'd put the mountains on the far western shore where the continental tectonic plate would be converging with the oceanic one, creating volcanic arc islands and mountains.

Good job for a first post! Congrats, and welcome to the Guild!!

[Pixie]

I see two different options for your mountains placement and a first step towards tectonics on this map, concerning mostly the NE continent.

1)
The continent is splitting (rifting). The eastern side and the western side have rifted quite some time ago and a sea is already open. This means both are moving apart which explains the mountains on the NE corners, but demands that you place Andes-like mountains on the NW coast, some Japan-like island chain or Alaska-like peninsula + islands since there's subduction happening there.
This is basically Chick's suggestion. but since the continent is big and close to the pole, I'd strongly recommend you read a little bit about Euler poles and project a simplified version of your map onto Google Earth, so you can look at your world from a North Pole perspective. Otherwise, you will probably place the subduction in the wrong place.

2)
The continent in the equatorial area was part of the northern one (west part) and rifted longer ago - the sea north of it, therefore has a kind of atlantic ridge in the middle, which you'd have to work out. This means the equatorial continent is moving south, southwest (and thus, its mountains are spot on) and the large mass to the west of the huge gulf in the north is moving northward. The large landmass to the east, then, is no part of the same plate. Which is fine, you can make it moving westwards, effectively making it responsible for that gulf, which becomes old oceanic floor being "eaten-up". In this case, the mountains for that land mass need to become andes-like, and on the eastern coast. That small range separating the peninsula in the south side of this same continent can stay, making that peninsula a northwest moving plate (converging with the large one).

Was this too confusing? Naming the regions would help..

[Aduym]

Thank you, both for your compliments and thoughtful comments. Pixie - I've edited the original post to include a map with "lettered" landmasses for easier reference. I will say that the one thing that I would like to keep is the mountain range on "B," since I have already developed a significant amount of history and lore that surrounds those mountains. Would your two options not necessarily be mutual exclusive? I had envisioned C rifting from A as you mentioned, while A and B began rifting more recently. D and E I haven't quite figured out yet. I know that when you look at D and E from the south pole perspective, they for a rough circle, which is what I wanted aesthetically.

[Pixie]

The letters do help to reference things...

Ok, so if you want those mountains on north and east of continent B, then the most likely explanation is that A and B have moved together northwards for quite some time. If that is the case, then there's two things in need of redoing: continent A needs to have mountains in the north coast as well, and a shape on that side that fits an advancing continental plate over oceanic plate (This shape is more or less like a D - with continent inside the letter, and the ocean being the space in front of it). See South American west coast, Japan pacific coast or Indonesia south coast for the best and most pronounced examples.

Upload a simplified version of your map onto this online resource: http://maptoglobe.bitbucket.org
If you haven't seen your planet on a sphere yet, you're far from reaching a convincing layout...