AERLAAN – A playground built for a muse

[tilt]

wow.. very cool work so far... the kind of work I wish I would do for the worlds I create and that I know I never will. Great work and I look forward to seeing more of your world

[PaGaN]

Hi Azelor. You're right on both counts. Re: climate design I think that to detail the minutia of a regions weather systems the hunt is not worth the catch. Knowing when it's going to be generally wet, dry, hot or cold is enough to get the level of realism we need. and regarding Ophelia, it is REALLY uncommon for the UK and western Europe to get hurricanes blow in off the gulf stream. Really the last one I could remember was in the 80s.

[Straf]

Was it the one that occurred exactly 30 years ago?
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-kent-41366241

[PaGaN]

wow.. very cool work so far... the kind of work I wish I would do for the worlds I create and that I know I never will. Great work and I look forward to seeing more of your world

Thanks Tilt!

This is certainly proving to be a VERY interesting and informative project to say the least. I somewhat naively thought i'd just rock up and start working away on the map after doing "a little groundwork on the foundations" with the help of the guild...LMAO.

It's all good though. What's proving REALLY entertaining and comforting is the fact that Kacey and I are going through this pretty much in lockstep...LOL. One could say we are twins in tectonics right now. This thread is kind of co-existing with Kacey's thread here...

Let's just say that my earlier expectations have been somewhat tempered by a more realistic expectation of the time that is required to get this stuff right.

"A job well begun is a job half done!" LOL (Yep, I just quoted Mary Poppins...LOL,or Aristotle...take your pick)

PaGaN

[PaGaN]

Was it the one that occurred exactly 30 years ago?
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-kent-41366241

HOLY CR*P! YEP! That's the one!

[PaGaN]

### Latest WIP ###

Okay, so I think i have the plate movements finally figured out to a point where i am happy with them. I have attached a GIF of the plate movements over 120 million years. The Gif moves at a rate of .25 million years/second.



The GIF doesn't show the mid ocean ridges or boundaries. I'm going to be adding them to the reconstruction hopefully over the next couple of day but the movements were all planned with what i imagined to be the correct movements that could be explained by divergent slab pull ridge push dynamics.

[kacey]

Hey that's pretty neat PaGaN! How did you get the animation from G.Plates and onto the forum?

[PaGaN]

Hey Kacey.

Thanks. I actually just recorded my monitor and saved as a gif...lol. no special wizardry

[Pixie]

Wow, that's good g.plates work in there! Congrats.
SOLID WORK!

However, I actually think you went very far in the past which will complicate working out topography. And you saved this as a 520-frames GIF, which is a lot to work with.

Here's what I would do: save a couple of frames (but not as gif, since GIF-frames only contain changes from the previous frame), mainly from the last "eons". In each of those frames scribble where mountains are being created and where bits of ocean are getting trapped. You can use this detailed GIF you made to find that out.
From one frame to the other, carry this bit of information. But keeping in mind that mountains will erode and ocean floors fill with sediment, so that oldest notes "age"...

(did this advice make any sense?)

[PaGaN]

Hey Pixie!

yep, your advice made perfect sense and was actually along the lines of what i'm working on right now. I may have gone a bit bananas but i screengreabbed the gplates reconstructions at 10ma intervals and on each interval are marking out the oceanic ridges/divergent boundaries, covergent boundaries and transform areas. Also, VERY roughly marking up where the ranges are (with a full understanding that these ranges will most likely have eroded significantly by the time "present day" rolls around.

Question for you though Pixie. Regarding ocean crust to ocean crust subduction, i know this is crucial for figuring our where ones island arcs are going to be, but i'm having trouble figuring out how oceanic crust ends up being subducted by oceanic crust. With the wilson cycle we only seem to be focusing on the push/pull dynamics between continental and oceanic crust. The only thing i can think of is that oceanic crust subducts oceanic crusts when a new rift system spreads to the point that it intersects a older rift system = subduction time.

This is why I felt that i needed to go back as far as i did so that i can get a grip on the midocean ridges and be able to figure out which oceanic crust is oldest and will therefore subduct under newer crust. I also chose to re-centre the map on the northern sea as this seems to provide a lot more visual focus to the map.



EDIT: Explanation for 77ma caption at the top of the image = my gplates reconstruction ran from 200ma to 0ma but I stopped at 77ma as i really liked that configuration for the landmasses. the reconstruction at 0ma went a bit sideways with most of the landmasses kind of forming a girdle around the world with very little land reaching into the northern or southern hemispheres.

I've stalled a bit as my mother-in-law is staying with us until wednesday and sleeping in our study (where my mac pro lives).

This time next week i should be in a position to take this all back into Photoshop to work out the coastlines and get onto the topography which, given all the tectonic legwork, should be relatively straightforward (fingers crossed)

PaGaN