A map of my tectonic plates!

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MysteryMan23
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A map of my tectonic plates!

Post by MysteryMan23 »

Here is a map of the tectonic plates of my conworld.

Image

What do you think? Anything really wrong with it? Anything unclear? I'd love to hear what you think!

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Hydroeccentricity
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Re: A map of my tectonic plates!

Post by Hydroeccentricity »

Plate C is almost completely surrounded by divergent zones. I guess that might work? I don't know. I don't think it's attested on Earth.
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Re: A map of my tectonic plates!

Post by CatDoom »

Plate C's boundaries are actually very similar to those of the African Plate, which is mostly surrounded by divergent boundaries, save for the convergent boundary with the Eurasian Plate in the north. Overall it looks ok to me, but I'm no geologist. :P

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Re: A map of my tectonic plates!

Post by KathTheDragon »

Could you mark on directions and relative speeds of the plates?

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Re: A map of my tectonic plates!

Post by CatDoom »

Subduction zones would be good, too, though I suppose it only makes sense to put those in if you already know where the continents are.

Also, I'm assuming that these are relatively rough borders that smooth out a lot of detail. Actual tectonic plates tend to be more jagged, particularly when the boundaries are underwater, and you get a lot of small zig-zags where divergent boundaries alternate with perpendicular transform faults.

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Re: A map of my tectonic plates!

Post by MysteryMan23 »

@KathTheDragon: I should be able to give rather rough directions for the relative movements of these plates. As for relative speeds, I'm not really certain how to figure those out. Might be nice to have a general idea, though.

@CatDoom: Okay, confession time. Believe it or not, I actually designed these plates around a set of continents I had already created. I wanted to focus on the plausibility of the plate boundaries themselves when I created this map, so I left the continents out on purpose. I assume the subduction zones would be at any convergent boundary involving an oceanic plate?

And yes, these are the rough borders. I want to be rather cautious about the details of my world; I want to make certain I get them correct, after all.

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Re: A map of my tectonic plates!

Post by CatDoom »

MysteryMan23 wrote:I assume the subduction zones would be at any convergent boundary involving an oceanic plate?
More or less, though it would technically be more correct to say that they involve convergent boundaries involving oceanic crust. Plates usually consist of both continental and oceanic crust in different places.

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Re: A map of my tectonic plates!

Post by MysteryMan23 »

CatDoom wrote:
MysteryMan23 wrote:I assume the subduction zones would be at any convergent boundary involving an oceanic plate?
More or less, though it would technically be more correct to say that they involve convergent boundaries involving oceanic crust. Plates usually consist of both continental and oceanic crust in different places.
Right then. Shouldn't be too hard to figure out where the oceanic crust is.

Is there anything you can tell me about how fast my continents should move? I'd like to know that, thanks.

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Re: A map of my tectonic plates!

Post by KathTheDragon »

In general, different plates will move at different speeds. This means that two plates travelling in the same direction with a boundary running in the same direction as well will actually have a transform boundary between them. Further more, if the boundary is perpendicular to their direction of motion (and they're still in the same direction) then which one's travelling faster will determine whether the boundary is divergent (the leading plate is faster) or convergent (the lagging plate is faster).

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Re: A map of my tectonic plates!

Post by MysteryMan23 »

Okay, so I'm starting to think I made a clear error with plate G.

Image

Did I make a mistake here, or could this actually happen? (And if so, how could it?)

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Re: A map of my tectonic plates!

Post by MysteryMan23 »

I hate to bump this thread, but I could really use help on the problem mentioned above. Anything you can tell me?

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Re: A map of my tectonic plates!

Post by Hydroeccentricity »

It's possible if Plate G is rotating, but really it's impossible to say what's plausible until we see the relative motion of all the plates. Plate G has lots of divergent boundaries, for example. Is it standing still while other plates go away, or is it also moving (meaning the nearby plates would presumably be moving faster or slower to maintain a divergent boundary)? Is it rotating? How quickly are the other plates moving around it?
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Re: A map of my tectonic plates!

Post by MysteryMan23 »

Okay, so I've added directions and speeds per year to my map. Here it is, complete with continents.

Image

Centi-whatevers are pretty close to centimeters; they're about a billionth of the distance between this planet's north pole and its equator. Since this planet is pretty much the same size as Earth, you can figure things out from there.

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Re: A map of my tectonic plates!

Post by MysteryMan23 »

I hate to do this again, but it seems I forgot to ask for comments in my last post. I'd really like some, because this is probably what I'm going to go with for my map barring any serious problems that get pointed out.

So, have I made any errors with this map of my plate tectonics?

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