Mapping

Here’s the third draft of my map. I fixed the issue with the Northern Plate I noticed while I was posting the second draft. I think I am quite happy with it now.

Arnâron - Plate Tectonics

Using the above, I’ve marked the major zones of volcanism on the following map. I am not quite sure yet whether or not the divergent zone between the Eastern Plate and the Northern Plate would have major volcanism, my current understanding is that it doesn’t. Man, geography class covered this sort of thing… but high school was sixteen years ago…

Arnâron - Volcanism

Of course the details of this map may change depending on the needs of further developments – we’ll see.

I worked a little more on the basic map. Here’s the result:

Arnâron - Plate Tectonics

As you can see, I rearranged the plates a little, and the map is more detailed now. Light blue is continental shelf. Dark blue are trenches. The brown spots are mountainous areas. The names of the plates are quite arbitrary, I could have just as well numbered them.

Basically, there’s one major divergent plate boundary, between the Northern Plate and the Eastern Plate. It’s the most active zone on Arnâron, especially the south, where the New Plate is being born from violent volcanism. The Western Plate is being pushed up on both its western as well as eastern convergent boundaries. The Western Plate is the most stable of the plates of Arnâron, and has a good chance to stay in place for a long time, until dynamics of the planetary interior change.

I’ll actually have to change the graphic again – as I write this, I notice that the Northern Plate should be pushing northwards as well as eastwards, and this in turn should be what’s pushing the Polar Plate southwards.

This is a fairly simplified picture of plate tectonics, but it should suffice for my purposes.

Here’s my first attempt at a map of Arnâron. It depicts the time when oceans still covered its surface. No climate zones or mountain ranges have been placed – this is very much a work in progress, but I figured I’d share it to document the progress. Besides… we need more graphics on this blog.