# Geography Inquiry



## Staff Deployment (Nov 28, 2012)

I'm writing a story. There is a lot of movement in this story, exclusively on one big island.

This is a revised map.





(Note: those mountains don't randomly spring out of flat ground. There's a gradual incline towards the centre of the island, which gets much steeper to form the peaks of the three mountains... which look kinda wobbly for some reason? I'm not very good at drawing elevation. Additionally, that tiny unreadable word starting with "U" says "Uninhabitable")
[spoiler2="Old Map"]
	

	
	
		
		

		
		
	


	




[/spoiler2]

It is very important that the geography makes sense, because otherwise my story about the wizards and zombies and zombie wizards would be _unrealistic._
Can't have that.

Assuming ideal conditions, what parts of it should I modify so that it is structured as a plausible natural environment?

In addition, what kinds of animals would one expect to find here? Currently it is mostly populated by rabbits, chickens, sheep, mice, falcons, and Komodo Dragons.
Thank you.


----------



## popsprocket (Nov 28, 2012)

The rivers should originate in the mountains and then flow out to sea, instead of just crossing the island.

The placement of the desert is correct, but the size is far too small from my understanding of how rain shadows work. I would probably just ditch it entirely and turn it into craggy foothills or something.


----------



## lothianwriter (Dec 3, 2012)

As per the previous poster Popsrocket, rivers should originate in mountains and flow out to the sea or to large inland lakes. 

However as your post does mention wizards I am assuming it is fantasy and if so, the geography can be like anything you want as long as you have some basis of why it is the way it is. You could have a desert in the middle of a verdant forrest where a sand wizard has a tower and all land for 5 miles around his tower is desert. I do agree that naturally it is unlikely for a desert to have came into being naturally where it is given the size of the island. but then I'm no expert.

Just let your imagination go with flow. but if you use some sort of magical or fantasy reasoning for the desert at least try and have this written into the story in some way.


----------



## Bloggsworth (Dec 3, 2012)

A seriously unlikely mix of animals unless they were introduced. The other thing is, off which continent is the island located and at what latitude; this will have an effect on the flora and fauna. I am not aware of any islands with both cougars and bears, in fact with either cougars or bears. The island would seem too small to support such a variety of animals. Pigs would be domestic and a sizeable number of cougars would probably have wiped out the boars and rabbits - Tasmania is, for instance, 364Km x 306Kn, in fact is not much bigger than the Isle of White.


----------



## Kevin (Dec 3, 2012)

@Oz- creating an island..that would be fun. We have some off our coast. Their geologic origin is that they are part of the mainland, part of the coastal mountains. The land between them and the mainland became submerged. Elephants were stranded there and developed into a pygmy variety, going extinct much later than on the mainland. Foxes and reptiles developed differently than their mainland counterparts. Some plants got larger and some only exist on the islands as their onshore cousins went extinct. Pigs and goats were introduced and thrived, becoming a problem for the ecosystem. There are cougars on the mainland; none on the islands. There are no large predators. The foxes are barely larger than a house cat.


----------



## Morkonan (Dec 10, 2012)

Staff Deployment said:


> ...Assuming ideal conditions, what parts of it should I modify so that it is structured as a plausible natural environment?



The size of that western mountain range makes no sense for an island like that. What sort of island is it? What "created" it? That mountain range would only make sense if some cataclysm occurred that resulted in half the island falling into the sea. And, if that happened, there's only a few natural explanations for it and none of them are very mundane, considering the scale.

That's another thing - Where's the scale? A Relative Map is fine and all, but some scale would be useful when discussing geography.



> In addition, what kinds of animals would one expect to find here? Currently it is mostly populated by pigs, boars, chickens, rabbits, cougars (in the mountains), and a few bears. I am not sure whether that actually makes sense.
> 
> Thank you.



Scale, it's all about scale. Big predators need big territory in order to support their own breeding population and the breeding population of the prey they need to sustain themselves. Also, for an island to have mainland critters on it, they need a way to have migrated there. Pigs didn't start off on islands and neither did any of those other critters. How did they get there? Guess why there aren't any bears on deep Pacific islands? They couldn't afford the shipping costs.

So, was there a period where this island was attached to the mainland by an isthmususesusssss..ess or what? Did the sea-level rise and end up isolating some of the animals? Were they magicked there? Was the island magicked away from some spot of mainland, leaving the world's largest pothole in its place?

Pigs/boars are terribly destructive to island environments. Some were left by passing ships, in order to provide feedstock for future voyages. (Goats as well.) Some may have escaped the pens of ancient inhabitants. But, regardless of how they got there, pigs/boars tend to be close to the top of the foodchain in island environments, where they're found. (IIRC) And, they generally tear up the place, reducing the environment to something that won't sustain large populations. Larger predators, that will occupy the top of the carnivore chain, can help. But, the island has to be large enough not only to support their food source, but their own breeding population. Ground nesting birds also tend to have it hard on islands, which is why there aren't many of them that aren't endangered on islands with carnivores. (Successful island ground/land nesters typically choose inaccessible ledges and the like.) Rats are particularly destructive, eating eggs and generally being, well.. rats. Other predators, including birds and small reptiles can make short work of ground-nesting fowl. So, if they're there, how do they keep surviving? No rats? No reptiles?

If I were you, I would closely look at some of the native populations of known large islands.

New Zealand native animals: Conservation

DOFAW - State Department of Fish and Wildlife

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fauna_of_New_Guinea

Notice anything? No large predators. Sure, there are still dangerous animals, but they're usually poisonous, not overpoweringly dangerous with big nasty teeth and claws. (Though, some islands, like Komodo, do have, besides the Komodo dragon, small buffalo.) So, you're going to have to explain the presence of lions and tigers and bears, oh my. Typically, these would be non-native species that arrived on the island simply by swimming there. That would mean that the island has to be close enough to a land mass that was large enough to have supported their evolution and, as these are recognized species of recent arrival on the evolutionary bus, plate tectonics will not explain it. (However, the island could have something like "cougars" and something like "bears." However, they'd be new species that evolved on the island, if it were suitably large enough and could support the population, etc.)


----------



## dolphinlee (Dec 16, 2012)

To the mundane!

Water - Some of your towns are not near rivers and therefore they would have no water to drink.

Food - what are the islanders eating. Fish obviously but what else? I think you need farmland for wheat/oats/corn.Sheep would be a good idea because they supply wool and meat. ​What do you eat? What do you want your islanders to eat?

Roads?

Obviously islanders can sail around the island but do you have any roads. 

Suggestion.

Print the map. Cut it into 4 parts. Get each part blown up to A3 and stick it back together. Having something bigger is easier to work with. 

Good luck.


----------



## Staff Deployment (Dec 16, 2012)

As per suggestions I'm thinking of replacing the native species with something more along the lines of rabbits, chickens, sheep, mice, falcons, and Komodo Dragons (because having at least one large predator is crucial to the plot).

I'm also restructuring the river system, and removing the mountains.

In terms of food and roads, I'd already determined most of that ahead of time because it's important; it's not obvious on the map but there are huge trade highways bifurcating the island, and shallow underground tunnels dug between most of the northern cities. Food consists mainly of fish in the south, but the farms produce wheat, grain, vegetables, and livestock, which feeds the major northern cities. Since the north doesn't produce much food independently, the farmers have always been on the brink of refusing to cooperate. Preservation is difficult, and in fact until recent events in the story the lack of sufficient methods of preserving food was a major cause of starvation.

Anyway there'll be a new map in a bit.


----------



## dolphinlee (Dec 18, 2012)

I think the new map makes more sense. Well done. 

You could also have pigs living in the forests. Think of wild boar thriving in Britain in the middle ages.

I am glad you got rid of the desert because if that area was dry then there should be little rain falling in the centre of the island.


----------

