Posts tagged geography
I made a map of the tectonic plates for my planet and then assigned each of them a direction. So as the question title says, what geographic features occur at each type of plate boundary? Also to ...
Is it reasonable for a river to be shallow enough to ford in one location, while nearby (say within 5 miles or less), be at least 12 feet (3.6m) deep? The same river can have shallow sections and d...
Back home and in this alternate scenario, the Ozarks are all that remains of a Proterozoic mountain range hundreds of millions of years ago. Back home, the Ozarks look like this, highlit in lime: ...
On an Earthlike planet with one large moon (just like Earth's), I have a large landlocked sea with one narrow exit (like the Black Sea, but much larger, something like six or eight Mediterraneans, ...
Let's say I have a Dyson sphere roughly the same size of the earth with a very small "star" in the center. Continents, oceans, and people inside the sphere experience a reverse gravity in the oppos...
Western civilisation fell over a few centuries ago, because the Earth shifted back into a full on ice age climate. Oh and Skynet kind of happened. Ice sheets expanded, inexorably rolling over the...
Looking at the topographical map of the two main islands of Britain--England to the east and Ireland to the west--is looking at two and a half million years of ice sculpting, grinding and melting...
In my 10 book series, the historical time line turns on the fact that the greatest nation in the major continent's history, disappeared overnight during a national celebration. This nation was enj...
In a setting I am presently working on, I have envisioned a world similar to Star Wars' Takodana, in that its water is mainly in the form of large rivers, or smaller seas (I generally picture it b...
From 5.96 to 5.33 million years ago, disaster struck the Mediterranean Sea. A tectonic snag turned this... ...into something like this. In this alternate scenario, the sea separating modern ...
Storms can devastate lives and property, but they have benefits as well--plenty of water for the plants and nitrogen for the soil. Even drought has its benefits, giving the landscape an occasional...
This question concerns this Alternative Earth. To make a certain fictional country which occupies the northern part of Russia more interesting, I want to make agriculture feasible in Siberia and t...
I'm building a post-apocalyptic setting where the cataclysmic event is a volcanic eruption from Yellowstone that releases a blanket of ash that reaches from California to just before the Midwest. E...
I am currently at the end of my wits. No matter what change I do to the North American geography, northeastern Nebraska (42.4649° North, 96.4131° West), is still in the danger zone called Tornad...
On an Earth-like planet, with the technological and cultural level of ancient Rome: What kind of terrain would be statistically best suited for a powerful city to be located?. The most important ...
I'm trying to construct a most realistic desert possible. I've made a continent with my little knowledge and may ask further questions about climate and similar stuff, but now I want to center on a...
This is the map of our Permian from 300 to 252 million years ago: As you can see, (nearly) all of the continents had joined together to create one massive landmass called Pangaea. To the sharp ...
I am creating a map for a story set in a pre-industrial world, and have made the basic physical geography. My main concern now is the development of culture, centred around urbanisation. There ar...
I'm building up a world with floating islands. They don't move much and generally stay around the same area. However, would this affect the weather? Essentially, I have giant floating rocks in the...
(Before anyone asks, this is related to the Sahara, Makgadikgadi and Himalaya questions.) The Sahara may take credit at being the hottest desert, but the Australian Outback is hardly a pushover by...
The Collared Peccary is not the name of the greatest man stripper under the sun, but is a species of mammal in the family Tayassuidae found in North, Central, and South America. They are commonly r...
Okay so in my world, I have two pre-industrial societies that live thousands of miles apart from each other on their ringworld. One lives in a desert climate similar to India or the Middle East whi...
Imagine you're on vacation in Greece. It's a nice sunny day, so you decide to go for a swim. The bottom of the sea is full of some greenish-brown ugly seaweed, every stone is covered by some fuzz a...
I am creating a fictional fantasy (Medieval-ish era) world. The area covered by my map is fairly large, and contains an ocean, mountains, plains, lakes, forests, swamps, etc. It's pretty much all t...
Randall Munroe humorously proclaims that he'd want to live in an example map in a geography book; That means that the geography varies wildly in a small area. Assuming the following: This is ...
Back home, there are three factors to consider: Mont Forel, Greenland's tallest peak, can be found in coordinates 66.9333° North and 36.8167° West The Arctic Ocean's average depth is 3406 feet,...
You see this little planet? Is a planet roughly the size of earth, just slightly smaller circumference by 50 kilometers and a smaller gravity of 0.8g with little variations around the world, just l...
I have created a world map for a story I'm making. And it has been too long since I studied geography and geology. Assuming earth-like conditions, and a normal distribution of climate based on (a...
I'm developing a semi-realistic game involving stereotypical dwarves digging into mountainsides and carving out grand caverns for themselves, similar to those in Moria or the Lonely Mountain from T...
What if there was an alternate earth where there was no landmass between North America and South America. For clarification, in place of Central America there would be a sunken land bridge at the d...
The geographical features that make New York stand out from any other of the United States--Long Island, the huge boulders scattered in the city and the Hudson River, deep enough for barges to pass...
Is it possible, the world being as it is for a city to be isolated completely from the world? Assume technological advancements to be the same as they are today. Would such a scenario be feasible...
I'm currently working on two connected continents for the world I'm building. They've created a convergent boundary where they meet, which has given rise to an east-west mountain range, in addition...
Let's say that a "terraformable planet" is a planet who : is in the goldilock zone of its star(s) has around the same gravity as Earth has a solid surface covered with minerals not too toxic for...
In the story I'm thinking to write there's a group of 50 000 humans with superpowers. These powers cause them to have great weaknesses so they decide to hide. Which countries or regions of large ...
I live in northeastern Nebraska, and I had seen more than enough of tornadoes in my lifetime. So in an alternate Earth, it is my hope to make some changes that would save my home from being anothe...
Basically I want to know what would happen to a planet if half of it was destroyed using explosives, does the answer depend on the size/gravity of the planet and what would be the result on the env...
I know that rivers do not usually split but they can. e.g. It can occur due the glacial shift. Are there any other ways that this could happen? And if it did would one river become dominant a ...
A large group of people has been banished from Earth and punished to scrape out a perilous existence on a strange planet. The planet has breathable atmosphere, and consists of an immense ocean teem...
The mountains of the American West have some major differences. For starters, only the Rockies stand firm"”no Coast Range, no Grand Canyon and most certainly no Sierra Nevada. The Rockies on Great ...
During the summer months, Tibet warms up like a hot brick, drawing in moisture from the Indian Ocean, and that explains why India is the wettest nation on Earth. In this alternate scenario, Tibe...
This is the Alps back home, cornering the Italian Peninsula and dominating the nations of Switzerland and Austria. The tallest, Mont Blanc, stands 15,780 feet above sea level. In this alternate...
I am building a world with many deserts and swamps. So a simple question: Are there any real world examples of where a desert and a swamp meet each other? Deserts and swamps are vastly different ...
So, I'm in the process of writing a book series having to do with prehistory and the like, and I'm trying to make everything as accurate to life as I can while still making it an entertaining story...
I know that by definition, a desert implies a lack of water and, as such, makes it very hard for living things to survive there. In the story I'm writing, the characters come across a planet that ...
Details: Would it be possible to have a mountain spring that only flows occasionally, perhaps only for a few days, following moderate rainfall? The spring water would feed into an otherwise stagn...
Would it be possible to have a planet made up of about 60-70% water with no landmasses larger than Australia? I would like this planet to be as earth like as possible, but I'm open to changing aspe...
On an Earth-like planet, there is a massive plateau, standing more than 1km high, and the breadth of a continent in the middle of an otherwise ocean planet. I know there are climactic issues to th...
If there was to be a habitable planet, similar to earth, but with varying gravity at different points on its surface - lets pretend that it varies from .8g to 1.2g - what sort of terrain or form wo...
Let's say a hole about the size of the Kola Superdeep Borehole spaced about every five miles across the continent of Australia. Assume no human interaction after initial placement Answers prefe...
