#biomes

[mapsontheweb]

Biomes of the Americas

[johnomow]

minecraft biomes

(ps: these are being made into keychains, stickers and prints too!)

[kiragecko]

The Canadian Shield

Apparently, the Canadian Shield is a “geologic province”. That just means a large area with a lot of geology in common. I like it because it’s really WEIRD.

The Shield was created by glaciers sliding through. They scraped off all the topsoil and softer rock, and messed up all the watersheds. What developed in the ruins was a maze of endless rivers and lakes, large rocks covered in mosses and lichens, and trees. Lots of trees.¹

There are several things that I think are cool:

the rocks, moss, and lichen

the deranged drainage system

the endlessness

Rocks, Moss, and Lichen

Much of the Canadian Shield is covered in boreal forests (also called taiga). At least, wherever there’s enough dirt. But there is a LOT of exposed rock. And growing on those rocks are the coolest plants/animals in the world – lichens.

Lichens are a symbiosis of algae, fungi, and yeast! Some look like moss – all soft branched stalks. Some look like crunchy fungi or seaweed – growing off the rocks in weird ruffles. Others look like … paint? You know how some rocks will have coloured crusty spots that can be peeled off? Those are lichen! (Some are even powdery, but we don’t get many of those in the Shield.)

Then there’s ACTUAL moss. And moss is almost as cool as lichen! All wet and squishy and ridiculously complex if you look at it closely. Gorgeous stuff!

And finally, there’s the rocks themselves. If you live in an area with rocks, possibly you do not find them breathtaking. But I remember excitedly talking to my parents for SEVERAL MINUTES after seeing a rock in a field, because here in the prairies, you don’t see them.

And these are COOL rocks. Bedrock. Super hard igneous rock that doesn’t wear quickly. It forms cliffs and ravines, despite the fact that the area is quite flat on the macroscale. Canoeing under a cliff face that leans over you is an awe-inspiring experience. Staring down into the depths of the lake below you, seeing that it goes straight down, and then a few feet later the water is shallow. The rocks are big, and full of neat cracks, and pretty coloured, and … they’re good rocks.

Deranged Drainage System

Since the land is made of super hard rock that weathers slowly, and all the watersheds got messed up by the glaciers dumping rocks around the edges of the Shield, water struggles to form normal drainage systems. Rather than starting as small rivers and then combining  as they flow downstream, water just collects in every lowpoint. Thousands of small lakes form, connecting to each other at odd, sometimes hidden, points, with very little predictability. Rapids and waterfalls are common. Shorelines are very irregular, with all sorts of hidden coves. It becomes difficult to figure out what is an island, and what is the mainland.

Looking down from the air, the landscape seems fractal. Sitting on a rock, staring at the opposite shore, it’s obvious that this is true.

Navigating these waterchannels takes a LOT of skill. Mapping them barely helps – the maps are complex enough that it’s hard to absorb the correct information. The Nîhithaw (Cree) navigate by attaching stories to the landmarks, which makes it fun to travel with a guide.

Endlessness

The Canadian Shield is HUGE. It covers over half of Canada! The features that make it up are small, and complex. Most of it is sparsely inhabited. There are few roads; and a lot of areas, travel is either by boat or float plane.

The effect is that of an endless landscape. By plane, you can see more lakes than you can count, all difficult to identify. They stretch to the horizon in every direction.

By boat, you can see many, many interesting  and unique-seeming features. But half an hour later you’ll discover yourself in a spot that looks identical. You’re frequently slipping around blind corners and into narrow, hidden channels, which increases the sense of covering ground. But because you’re rarely going in a straight line, it’s difficult to figure out how far you’ve actually gone. It’s a maze, and it’s possible to travel it for days without seeing a single other human.

(Or you can see multiple groups of people over an hour long trip. It’s very unpredictable.)

That combination of isolation, scale, constantly changing view (that still stays the same TYPE of view), lets me truly  FEEL the vastness. Everything about me gets quiet in the Shield. I’ll suddenly find my face aching from smiling so big for so long. The world is endless and peaceful and not designed for me in the slightest.

It’s exhilarating.

-

¹ There are a few different biomes in the Shield. But the main one, and the one I’ve mostly experienced, is the boreal forest. So that’s the part I’m focusing on. Especially the landscapes of the Whiteshell and northern Saskatchewan.

[hometoursandotherstuff]

[tellioari]

the Static Dunes!

This biome is not like your normal desert, with dark skies and tubes of neon sticking up out of the sands, illuminating the darkness. A new type of fire can be found here - Static Fire - which does not do you damage, but instead incurs bizarre status effects and completely muddles your vision with static when engulfed.

Occasionally when mining the sand, a static clod can be dropped. This functions similarly to coal, able to smelt items, but it is also how you can craft the static fire items.

No ordinary hostile mobs spawn at night in this biome. Instead, a two dimensional figure made of pure static stalks you and only moves when you are not looking - slowly getting closer to you. Do not let it touch you. It cannot be damaged by conventional means, either. It does not like to be near static fire, avoiding it when possible, and bathing it in static fire can remove it temporarily.

I should also note that this is not content that will be in the base dye mod! these are concepts for a future biome mod that used the blocks added in the dye mod as a base.

[a-dinosaur-a-day]

I tried to be thorough I'm sorry

[ahb-writes]

Fantasy Worldbuilding Questions (Geography)

Geographical Worldbuilding Questions:

What is the terrain like for key setting regions – which regions are coastal, mountainous, arid, or have dense vegetation?

What effect does geography have on other aspects of world, such as transportation, trade and industry, environmental challenges, clothing, food and drink?

Who lives in each geographical region and how have they adapted to it?

Who prefers which regions or biomes, and why?

Where are the world's borders and boundaries? Are there separate nations or kingdoms? What distinguishes the geography of each?

Where are the largest metropolises or wilds? Or is everything undeveloped (e.g., if your story features extra-terrestrial exploration)?

When was this world first mapped? Are there regions people know little about or tell legends about ('There be dragons')?

When has landscape changed, due to natural causes or development? What effects did this change have?

Why is this world's geography interesting or unusual?

Why is any region in this world habitable or uninhabitable? What are its dangers, threats, or quirks?

❯ ❯ ❯ Read other writing masterposts in this series: Worldbuilding Questions for Deeper Settings

[ryanthedemiboy]

Source: Dave McShaffrey, Marietta College Department of Biology and Environmental Science. Used with permission.

(Tap/click the image to view it in good resolution)

[artbyifer]

Exquisite Biome with Bakageta - Freds

@Bakageta on tumblr and I played a 3-round game of Exquisite Biome, which was a blast and I would recommend checking it out! Here is the first species we created, Fred! Freds are a species of hyper-omnivores from a black tundra. The majority of the time freds are in hibernation; adults, juveniles, and eggs alike buried in cryostasis far under the ice. When the local semi-dormant volcano enters a heat cycle however, it warms up hotspots enough for the ice to melt and an amphibious plague emerges to gobble up everything that can fit in their maws. Which is not overly much for the average fred; but for those rare few that survive predation, reproduction, and the elements long enough to make it through to a cold cycle and out the other side, those numbers start to add up. With each cycle survived and its attendant growth spurt from the warm season glut, freds grow increasingly larger and larger. Though few and far between, the eldest freds are truly massive monsters of jrpg boss proportions. Freds opt for a "run and hide" style of defense, able to briefly glide from the cliffs of the caldera for an effective bit of distance with the aid of their dorsal sails. These same sails can spread wide both to absorb what heat they can from the sun and help conceal a hiding fred against the black rock and ice around them.

Posted using PostyBirb

[script-a-world]

Submitted via Google Form:

Thinking of building a planet that is almost all desert except for the oceans? I'm saying something like 80% desert 20% ocean. Only the polar regions are oceans? But they're connected by rivers that join at the same source, as in one flowing north and the other south. The thing is, what kind of land needs to be at the source of the river then? I suppose those places might need to be a little less desert but that's fine I could have 75% desert, 20% ocean, 5% forest, etc... Anything else I might need to consider?

Tex: So the thing about water is that it’s capable of being in multiple phase states and moving around as a major aspect of a planet’s weather system (Wikipedia 1, Wikipedia 2). It’s not actually possible to isolate water unless it’s manipulated in some way by its environment to, primarily, stay in one state - think planets too cold to defrost, or too hot for humidity, or all the water is compressed underground with a non-porous material preventing its escape, or the water is bonded with something else to otherwise restrict its movement. Have you found any non-Earth planets to model your planet off of? There’s a variety of planets - Mars included, but not the only body on the list - that have different ratios of water to not-water according to a variety of characteristics (Wikipedia).

Wootzel: What you’re proposing probably isn’t realistically possible. That’s not to say that you shouldn’t do it, but I don’t think there’s a plausible natural explanation for this kind of water system.

River/stream sources are always precipitation-fueled in some way. Usually, streams form as rainwater or snowmelt travels downhill. Some have a spring at their source, but the water from this stream is also just rainwater that hung around in an aquifer and traveled underground for a bit before coming up through some kind of crack in the earth (sometimes fueled by volcanic activity). Prevailing winds are mainly caused by the planet’s rotation, so most of your winds won’t be north/south. That more or less gives your evaporated water no particular reason to end up where you want your river source to be.

The only suggestion I can make is that your source-land-type would need to be mountainous. The rain shadow effect is the only reason I can think of for precipitation to fall in one area on a planet but not others, as long as the rest of your land is REALLY flat.

[mapsontheweb]

Map of Brazilian Biomes: Equivalents in the Minecraft World

[vee-creatation]

Most of the Creatatures I've posted have been fairly simple, early-game Creatatures from the Forests and Plains that you will likely see on your first day. However, in order to continue exploring this wide, wonderful world, I'd love to know where you want to go next.

[fallensapphires]

Nature: Biomes - Boreal Forest

The woods carry sounds in their slow rhythms, sounds that only a heart can hear.