[WIP] World of Aduhr

[Charerg]

And yet another update:

I've made some slight modifications to the tectonics (nothing major, just a few microplates, and a reworking of the Agalhaic Ridge). Also, I added some new landmasses, mainly in the form of a new "wing" to the southeastern continent of Anapar. In the new map, there are also yellow lines showing developing Rifts, intended to show places similar to the Great Rift Valley in Africa or the West Antarctic Rift.



With the addition of new land masses, I'm now at 27,5 % land area, which I suppose I can live with. So, I think I'm finished with the coastlines and tectonics at this point. As usual, suggestions, criticisms and comments are highly appreciated!

[CarnivorousJellybean]

That looks like it took a lot of work an complicated geology stuff to get right, but the results seem completely worth it! Your map looks really believable (to me with my untrained eyes). I'm quite inexperienced with cartography as a whole though so I'll leave the actual feedback to smarter people!

May I ask how you've been calculating the land area? I was doing rough estimates on my map with grids and counting the filled squares, so if you have a more accurate or easy way of doing it, I'm all ears!

[Charerg]

I don't know if geology played that much of a huge role in drawing the landscape. Mostly it was just a large amount of manual work drawing the shapes of the land. Though I did often use various Earthly coastlines as inspiration when doing the coastlines in detail. But the tectonic stuff really came into play only when the coastlines were finished. Glad you like how it turned out, though!

The land area can be calculated by using GProjector to switch to a Mollweide projection (or some other Equal area projection). The map should be a simple black-and-white map depicting the landmasses. In GProjector remember to leave the graticule and the border out, and the background needs to be a different color than black or white. This is done because you essentially want a 3-color map (background, water and land each in separate colour). Then just save your map in some format (png works well for me), with the best possible resolution (6800x3400 has been the "practical limit" for my gprojector before the program freezes).

Next up, import your fresh map into an image manipulation program (I use Gimp), and use the "Select by colour" tool to select all the landmass. Now there should be some way to show you the amount of pixels within your selection. In Gimp you can do this by selecting Windows->Dockable Dialogues->Histogram, and it will show you the pixel count. If you use some other program, you can probably find a way to do this by googling. Anyway, once you have the pixel count for land, write it down and do the same thing for water. Then you know the total pixel count, and the land pixel count, and can calculate the percentage.

[CarnivorousJellybean]

Ooh that's smart! I'll give it a try

[Robulous]

Thanks for the tip about GProjector, I'll give it a go!

Incidentally - re plate tectonics, we only have the exampe of Earth to go by, we really don't know how it would work on other planets. Mars may have had plates in the past (we can guess this from the Chasmas), but we don't understand how they worked. Personally I have an idea of tectonics for my own world(s), but I wouldn't get too bogged down by the technicalities.

[Charerg]

A small update:

With Azelor's new climate tutorial out, I thought I'd "jump on the bandwagon" and do the climates. As far as the topography goes, I've so far copy-pasted my previous work to the Equirectangular map, but other than that I haven't made any progress on that front (mostly because I haven't had the motivation to take on the task).

I'll probably do a rough version of the height map for the purposes of working on the climate at some point. So far though, I have the continental shelves mapped out and a draft of the oceanic currents:



The colour code on the currents is the usual: black for "neutral", red for relatively warm and blue for relatively cold.

[Pixie]

Looks good to my eyes.

There's just one place where I'm not sure I agree. It's the sea south of Druegia.
I think I would add a coastal east flowing current in there, returning west just a couple of degrees south. At that latitude, dominant winds head SW, so the water at the coast is blown away from the shore which "sucks" deeper/colder water. That cold water would be a significant current (both for climate and for economics, since areas of upwelling of deep cold water are generally very rich in fish resources).

This, of course, is me throwing educated guesses. Ignore at will if you like

[Charerg]

So, it's been a while since my last update. I took a bit of a break from the project, but it is by no means forgotten!

Now that Azelor's climate tutorial is largely finished, I finally summoned the motivation to draw the elevation map for Aduhr. Here are the results and a map of Earth (originally posted by Azelor in his thread) for purposes of comparison (the elevation levels and the associated colours are the same in both maps).

Aduhr (Equirectangular projection):


Earth (Winkel Tripel projection):


At present, some of the elevation levels (0-10 m, and the levels above 4 km) are unused, since the elevation map is primarily created for the purposes of determining climates, and I figure that anything above 4 km in elevation will be either tundra or ice regardless of latitude. That said, I'll probably fine tune the map at some point, and add in the missing details. Anyway, comments/suggestions are welcome regarding the elevation map.

Next up, I'll start doing the different steps of Azelor's tutorial.

@Pixie:
I decided to take your suggestion, and added a few minor cold currents south of Druegia.

[Charerg]

Before I get started with posting the climate-related maps for Aduhr (following Azelor's tutorial), I think it might be interesting to post my previous attempt at a climate map of Aduhr. This was done back in the summer, and it's loosely based on Pixie's earlier tutorial. In this climate map I used a rough estimate of annual mean temperatures and precipitations instead of separate maps for July and January.

So, here is the old version of the annual mean temperature map:


And the annual mean precipitation:


And finally the Köppen-Geiger climates:


These were done based on a very rough topographic map of the earlier version of Aduhr (based on the old tectonic model, in other words). It should be interesting to see how different the climate zones will turn out with a bit more refined approach.

Anyway, to get started on Azelor's tutorial, here are the maps for the atmospheric pressure systems (including wind patterns).

January:


July:


Any suggestions and comments regarding the wind patterns and pressure zones are highly appreciated!

[Charerg]

A climate-related update:

I've completed the temperature and precipitation maps for Aduhr, following Azelor's tutorial. Now it's just a matter of waiting for the last step of the tutorial, and the climates should be done!

The colour key for the temperature maps is in the attachments. In the precipitation maps, lighter colour means more wet, and pink extremely dry, the rest are in between.

January temperatures:


January precipitation:


July temperatures:


July precipitation:


So, there it is. As usual, suggestions are welcome.