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This is the map of my alien planet's continents and I want to know if the environments are accurate.

The symbol at the top is the Arctic island. It's like Greenland and has some greenery or should I say yellowery but is mostly frozen and covered in snow. It is above the middle equator of the planet. The one in the middle of the equator and middle of the super continent is a jungle/forest. Do these normally happen in the middle of a continent? The one next to it is a savanna, and the one above it with the orange is a desert. And finally the one at the bottom-left of the continent is a swamp or marsh, and the other one on the left of the forest symbol is a grasslands.

Would these be accurate? and What would the bottom of the supercontinent where all the rivers meet be? I imagine the lower level being eroded by waves and frequent storms.

The pyramid-looking things are mountains and not pyramids.

The conditions of my super earth for help-The atmosphere of the planet has 30% oxygen (if this is too much then i will take it down to 25% to avoid global fires). Argon is 0.92% and nitrogen is around 65% and there's like 0.1 percent of other gases like carbon dioxide,methane and water vapor. The average temperature is between 59 and 49 degrees Fahrenheit. The average humidity is around 57% while the highest could be around 60° on a hot season, but it's not 60° the whole planet.

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  • $\begingroup$ You might want to do some reading about how climate and environments develop. The Worldbuilding Pasta Blog is to this date as far as I know the best source to learn about this for world building. $\endgroup$ May 10, 2022 at 13:39
  • $\begingroup$ thanks for the info $\endgroup$ May 10, 2022 at 13:45
  • $\begingroup$ well you have a river in north of your big continent that either forks downstream or starts in the ocean, both are No No's – $\endgroup$
    – John
    May 10, 2022 at 22:07
  • $\begingroup$ ok but why wouldent there be rivers there? i mean theres got to be rivers for animals to drink $\endgroup$ May 11, 2022 at 12:21
  • $\begingroup$ Why not start with a real map of some real lands, and amend it first to camouflage it, then to take account of what the story actually requires? $\endgroup$ May 15, 2022 at 22:52

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Since nobody knows the conditions on your planet - temperature, humidity, wind pattern, size etc. - who is to say if your deserts and jungles are on the right place?

Generally on Earth the center of the continents is more likely to be desert than jungle. But that is certainly not true for South America, which has the Amazon, the largest rain forest on Earth, in its center.

In the Mesozoic, when there was one supercontinent, Pangaea, the interior of Pangaea was all desert and lush forests were at the coast. However, at that time it was much hotter than today. The planet was in a "hot house state" (there were no icecaps), so deserts could form easier. When, due to climate change, global average temperature becomes as high as in the Mesozoic, the Amazon will have collapsed and turned into grass land and then into desert.

Your planet does have ice caps, at least it has glaciers, which suggests that it is in an "ice house state". So I guess you can have a jungle in the middle of the continent.

On your planet wind patterns could be such that they blow between the two mountain ranges and bring humid air from the southeast or northwest to the center.

But in this case it does not seem likely that the jungle is on both sides adjacent to grass land /savannah (isn't that the same?), both to the southeast and to the northwest. If I were an interstellar probe exploring an alien planet and would encounter such a constellation I would be puzzled. Where does the jungle get its rain from?

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  • $\begingroup$ i added the info $\endgroup$ May 10, 2022 at 12:42
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Extend the Jungle.

I suggest these changes

enter image description here

The grassland becomes jungle. The Blue arrow is the wind. The brown parts are extra mountains.

Explanation:

Typically jungles are on the coast. The wind carries moisture from the sea that feeds the forest. It goes ocean, forest, grassland, desert. If there are mountains blocking the rain you can go straight from forest to desert. Look

enter image description here

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The changes work because the jungle is fed by the wind (blue). Add mountains (brown) on the border of the desert to stop it turning into a jungle.

The swamp is fed by the same wind. This is okay since it happens in Bangladesh. A mangrove forest is a type of swamp. The savanna is okay since it is behind the forest.

Here is another option:

enter image description here

Remove those mountains. Then the wind creates the jungle. But near the coast there is too much moisture and we get a swamp instead. Chuck in some mountains as the boundary of swamp/jungle/sananah.

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  • $\begingroup$ thank u this was very usefueal and easy for me to understand thank u $\endgroup$ May 10, 2022 at 12:37
  • $\begingroup$ @ErikSanchez You're welcome $\endgroup$
    – Daron
    May 10, 2022 at 14:57
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Deserts happen at specific latitudes

Due to Hadley cells, most of the worlds deserts are all at 30 deg N or S. You can see it on a world map; put your finger on the Sahara, and travel due East or West. You get an inordinate number of deserts. I'm struggling a bit with your icons (tiny screen here), but make sure your deserts are at 30 degrees latitude, not at the equator. Yes, this would hold for other Earth-like planets.

Edit: Near 30 / in the 30s, excluding polar deserts.

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  • $\begingroup$ The Kyzylkum Desert and the Gobi Desert lie mostly north of the 40th parallel. The Taklamakan Desert lies between the the 35th and the 40th parallel. The Patagonian Desert is located around 40 degrees southern latitude. $\endgroup$
    – AlexP
    May 10, 2022 at 12:04
  • $\begingroup$ 30s, then. Hadley Cells are a thing. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hadley_cell. They can deviate by a few degrees due to ocean currents. $\endgroup$
    – user86462
    May 10, 2022 at 19:58
  • $\begingroup$ en.wikipedia.org/wiki/"Horse_latitudes The consistently warm, dry, and sunny conditions of the horse latitudes are the main cause for the existence of the world's major non-polar deserts, such as the Sahara Desert in Africa, the Arabian and Syrian deserts in the Middle East, the Mojave and Sonoran deserts in the southwestern United States and northern Mexico, all in the Northern Hemisphere; and the Atacama Desert, the Kalahari Desert, and the Australian Desert in the Southern Hemisphere." $\endgroup$
    – user86462
    May 10, 2022 at 20:00

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