Ringstadt: Can my mountains be what I need them to?

When the old mining town was founded, nobody did think of this ever growing into much more than a coal-mining town. The deposits of iron-ore, aside from the already developed peat bog to the north, driving the tools & weapons industries this city is now thriving from, have originally been estimated to be much smaller in size - and deemed not worthy of exploitation..

Introductory course to the History & Sociology of the tri-region area, Ringstadt Militaric University.

This question is a spin-off to this question about the topography in the below map. Please refer to it for general questions or observations about the map & area.

This spin-off is about understanding & determining the make up of the mountains to the north of the map. For future story-purposes the mountains/rock will have to fulfill certain properties, this is about finding out if my goals for them are possible or if I need to rethink this part.

Desired Properties:

For the purpose of developing an eventual city in this area, I was planning to have initial mines along the ridge from D2 to F3 (later expanding towards H4) producing coal from strata mostly parallel to adjacent ground-level.

Eventually I wanted expansion and further prospecting to reveal massive depots of iron and preferably some other ores/minerals as well (maybe copper?) in the deeper strata below the coal. Coal being carbonized organics, I imagined that the coal layer(s) could have been folded on top of the ore deposits by glacial movement or similar.

In order to get access to lower strata and deposits I imagined some eventual open-pit mining in the F2 area, the resulting waste-rock being used as building materials (if I can have sandstone, granite or other building rock there) and to raise embankments in the C2 to C5 area, creating a protected harbour.

For story & fanciness purposes I would love to have big tunnels leading into the mountains, and massive underground caverns that are left-overs from the mining process (so I can fill them with secret military installations, or simply storage, or what not).

Legend:
 brown               ->  topological lines, 10 meters each
 blue -line-         ->  streams, rivers
 light-blue -solid-  ->  bodies of water
 turquoise           ->  peat bog
 olive               ->  reed marshes

Each grid-cell is 400m by 400m.

Q: Can the above described desired properties be realistically met by the rock and soil in this area Can my mountains be what I need them to?

A good answer should at least address the following topics:

• Can I have the resources I in the described area?
  • Can I have the upper layer of coal-seams?
  • Can I have the massive iron deposits?
  • Can I have the supplemental Copper (or other useful ore) deposit(s)?
• If this cannot work, why - what stands in the way of it?

In addition it would be amazing if answers that explain why this cannot happen, to include a section proposing alternative situations of resources that come close/to a similar result as what I am describing in the above prose.

• Please ignore the resources available in the peat-bog; I know there will be bog-iron and it will play a significant part in the earlier development of the region. Same goes for the clay and gravel available through the reed-marshes and river-deposits.

posted over 6 years ago

dot_Sp0T‭

26 reputation 46 2 3 0