Topographical map of the Ice bed of Antarctica

WeathermanSweden

Over at the Facebook group there was a short discussion about a topographical map of Antarctica without snow and ice.
So, why not give it a try in CC3+?

WeathermanSweden

And here is the FCW file...

WeathermanSweden

And now you can change the palette in CC3+ and can get whatever you want

WeathermanSweden

Above: Arctic
Below: Parchment Dark

Monsen

Nice. These look great.

Looking at these maps make me want to have more adventures for my players in the polar regions. And by coincidence, they did visit the north pole during last session. My world don't have landmasses in the poler regions though, only thick ice sheets.

Loopysue

Lovely maps, Andre

Remy - maybe its time to invent a global catastrophe that causes the rise of at least one polar landmass?

[Deleted User]

Or the world with 100 metre rise in oceans.

jslayton

Unless your players' characters treat ice and water as if it's air, they're never going to get to the "land" shown above. Antarctica's air/not air interface is much more like a big flat thing than the rock layer found many kilometers below that surface (which is what the above data is for).

Loopysue

The interesting thing about Antarctica losing all its ice is that the land would slowly spring back from being depressed by its enormous weight - likely causing earthquakes and potentially new volcanic hotspots. Apart from the earthquakes and volcanoes Antarctica would get quite a lot bigger than it is as the shallower waters would most likely be raised to land.

JimP

A geographic program I watched a few years about the Antarctic area says there is an active volcano under the ice there.

Wyvern

Jim, there are currently 138 volcanoes claimed as known beneath the West Antarctic Ice Sheet alone. There are strongly suspected areas of volcanic activity beneath the East Antarctic Ice Sheet as well, but this region has been much less studied overall. The figure of 138 volcanoes is from Wikipedia's Geography of Antarctica page, an order of magnitude that other sources confirm at least. There are also numerous surface volcanoes on and around Antarctica, aside from places such as the famous Mount Erebus.

The map(s) shown here are from the BEDMAP 2 survey project conducted by the British Antarctic Survey in recent years (you can access a much enlarged version of of the first map shown by WeathermanSweden on the linked page). It's also worth reviewing at least the first map (Fig 1) in a paper available for free PDF download via ResearchGate The glacial geomorphology of the Antarctic ice-sheet bed, because this shows both the current coastline (black outline) and the rebounded one Loopysue was talking about (white outline). The latter confirms Antarctica sans ice would indeed be a substantial "new" solid landmass to explore, along with some significant islands of many sizes across much of what's now called West Antarctica.

JimP

Proably the documentary was old. I saw it about 2008. But they only mentioned one volcano. Interesting that there are so many of them.

WeathermanSweden

In the paper mentioned by Wyvern is a map that shows a rebounded version of Antarctica.
A similar one can be archived by adding one third of the ice thickness to the heights of the Antarctic ice-sheet bed to simulate land raise after the ice has gone.
Not that this method is quite scientific...but the the result is quite similar...

In this map you also see the boundaries of the dataset I used (Wyvern mentioned it above)

So this is how Antarctica approximately could have looked like before the ice came(or what it may look like a "long time" after when all ice is gone)...

Wyvern

Neat trick, WeathermanSweden

Maybe worth adding the FCW file for this version of Antarctica too, if you're willing?

If anyone wants to play around a little more with the appearance of Antarctica, albeit not at this level of top-down completeness, it's worth seeing the NASA website for details from the IceBridge Mission, one of the contributors of data to the BEDMAP 2 project.

This page is the most recent news item, posted at the Mission's conclusion in December 2019, but this one is more fun, because it lets you slide the ice across or away from the whole imaged topographic view! There's quite a bit of vertical exaggeration to get the surface features to show up properly at this continental scale, but that helps it look more like some of the usual CC3+ overland mapping styles to me. Plus there's an image further down that second linked page where you can do a similar sliding comparison between the original, less detailed, BEDMAP survey and the newer BEDMAP 2 one.

WeathermanSweden

So here is a FCW version of Antarctica without ice (after the land has risen...)
We got a fantasy world - based on real world data with some adjustments...


Antarctica_Iceless.FCW

Loopysue

Thank you, Andre! That's very generous of you

Is it only me, or does your map just scream for a whole new fantasy novel?

Or at least an intricate fantasy map?

WeathermanSweden

Hello Sue,
I'm just doing a "Loopysue-fantasy-terrain-terraforming" with it
So let's wait and see how it looks like with rivers... ...when iceless Antarctica has gone through your Annual
Just now I have completed the Wilbur-cycle and the land is back in FT3 - where it now generates the rivers...my pc is cooking...55%...

/André

Loopysue

Hi Andre

I was curious about that myself, but I thought about the fact that the mountain tips were already eroded and didn't want to suggest it in case it just looked weird. But if you're doing it anyway...

WeathermanSweden

So it looks like in FT3 at this stage:

Loopysue

That came out a lot better than I thought it would

Some of those glacial valleys are simply vast.

But now it definitely looks worth a novel or two.

WeathermanSweden

The topographical map map in CC3+

WeathermanSweden

...and with some shading effects...

mike robel

Very Nice...

Loopysue

I agree. Very nice indeed.

When you say "with shading effects", is that still the CC3 map?

WeathermanSweden

Thank you Mike and Sue!
And yes, Sue - "The shading-effects-map" is a CC3+ - map; actually the same as above, but with a lightmap-image from Wilbur imported to a separate sheet that is blended to the colour contour sheet.
It is some kind of a temporary solution; still trying to find other ways to do it.

I can post a link to the FCW and the lightmaps if you like.
/André

Loopysue

Ah, I see. A sort of hybrid map between pure CC3 and pure Wilbur export.

I imagine that I would not be the only one who would much enjoy being able to view this at leisure on my screen - thank you very much

ScottA

Wow, that is stunning work. I love it!

[Deleted User]

Stunning.

Ralf

Very, very beautiful. Kudos on the great work!

WeathermanSweden

And here the zipped FCW with the belonging images for shading. They have to be placed in the same folder as the fcw file. Then it should work...
Antarctica_iceless.zip
Without Sheet-effects you should get the above version without shading.
With effects on you get this one.
If you want the darker version above, change the blender mode effect in the CONTOURS (LAND) sheet from "Hard Light" to "Multiply".

Greetings,
André

WeathermanSweden

Shared this also on Facebook - and here for those not being on FB:

I love your colour styles from Sue's November Annual - so just by a few clicks and changing the colour palette of the map we can create winter conditions...