Sorry to hear about your computer crash. Hope you come back better than ever. You're off to a good start.
Hey guys, hope you are all well.
Had a bit of bad luck a few months ago in that I had a bad data crash and lost pretty much everything of my then project (v2 of Xeon).
So after going back to the drawing board and a few attempts, I have (hopefully) got a plausible map, which if you don't mind would like to get some feedback and critique. I done just basic world map with approximate tectonic boundaries. Please let me know any feedback and advice.
Thanks in advance.
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Sorry to hear about your computer crash. Hope you come back better than ever. You're off to a good start.
"We are the music makers, and we are the dreamers of dreams"
Looks good! I have never done plate tectonics myself for my maps, so I can't contribute much to yours, but everything looks alright!
Thanks guys, that's really great to hear.
Hope everyone had a nice festive period
Current WIP, did topo for one of the landmasses and some islands, as always any feedback always welcome.
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Looks good! I have a couple notes that depending on how fussed you are with realism you may or may not choose to ignore.
1. Your coastlines I think match almost too well with each other if this is meant to be reminiscent of modern Earth conditions. What you've done would be perfectly reasonable, however, in a world with much less continental shelf, such as Earth 22,000 years ago at the last glacial maximum. So much water is locked up in ice sheets that sea levels drop significantly, leaving much less of the continental area flooded. This makes the coastline a much better fit to the shape of the continents, which is how you've drawn it. In a modern interglacial setting the coastline has receded from the edge of the continental shelf, and can be a lot more fractal in some places than others. A great example is the UK:
Attachment 136848
2. This is a super minor nitpick, and I only know this cause I'm a master's student in Geology, but in your plate tectonic map a lot of your divergent plate boundaries show the green and red segments often at greater than or less than 90 degrees. They should really be as close to 90 as possible, with some leeway given at high latitudes due to the projection. Did you model this on GPlates? If not, don't worry about it, just try to keep the green lines and red lines at 90 degrees (changing their lengths and number if you need to) for any given plate boundary.
Also this only really matters if you intend to add a bathymetric map, if not, you can pretty much discard this point.
3. Perhaps try to vary up the size of your island chains. They all seem to follow a Japan-like form, which is fairly unrealistic for your mid-ocean subduction zones. I would probably say the majority of your subduction zones should be more like the Marianas or Vanuatu in terms of island size (though this is hard to draw on a world map!). If you want extra L1qu1dN1trog3n brownie points, the subduction zones furthest from their spreading ridges should have smaller islands, cause these subduction zones are typically steeper and there is less overall uplift.
Overall, looks very nice! Also, this is probably pure coincidence, but I noticed you have a plate called the Taras plate. A man called Taras Gerya happens to be one of the most influential scientists working on plate tectonics at this
Your friendly neighbourhood tectonic technician
Thanks so much for your advice L1qu1dN1trog3n, I will definitely re-visit those areas you mentioned. I did indeed start off with GPlates and a re-traced the plate boundaries in Photoshop, the red/green were meant to be 90 degrees but laziness got in the way.
I will be adding Bathymetry at some point once I have done the topography on the continents, but I will re-visit the island chains first as you pointed out. I must admit I did think they didn't look quite right.
Regarding tha Taras plate, I am totally amazed by that, talk about coincedences! It, along with all of my place names comes from Scottish Gaelic, in this case it comes from the phrase tàr às meaning 'to escape'.
I will pop up a revised version soon
Great, glad to hear that was helpful!
Your friendly neighbourhood tectonic technician
Following L1qu1dN1trog3n's helpful advice I have made some changes, as always any feedback would be appreciated.
I updated the eastern ocean area with some smaller island groups rather than the previous 'Japan' style groups and made some minor changes to the tectonic boundaries to suit. I also made a slight change to the archipelago a just off the Qorrana/Ardreva west coast.
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Just had a bit of a wake cup call by watching some tectonics videos plus some other stuff and realised realised my reincarnated project is a bit of a horror show, going back to the drawing board now. Apologies folks for wasting your time. Hopefully be back soon.