Alderaan Comes to a Close

Alderaan is home to many types of beautiful geography that can be seen throughout its landscape. Alderaan has a Karst landscape from how many hills, poljes, caverns, and is covered in stony barren rock. It has a highland climate, which causes it to be fairly cool throughout the year and snows in the higher elevations. At higher elevations, frost weathering occurs, causing parts of the mountain to fall throughout the region. Part of its landscape is home to many transport limited slopes, causing vegetation to grow a certain way. Finally, Alderaan has two types of plate tectonics, convergence (causes all the folds/hills around Alderaan) and divergence (Caused the people of Alderaan to create a bridge in my first blog). Unfortunately, Alderaan gets destroyed by the Death Star in Episode IV...so we'll never get to see Alderaan's progress over the next 1000 years, but lets say Darth Vader never existed, here is what Alderaan would look like in 10, 100, and 1000 years.

Alderaan in 10 years,
Due to Alderaan's climate, frost weathering will continue to break apart the mountains causing rocks/rock fragments to fall causing elevation changes in both the mountain and the ground. Also, two things will occur regarding Alderaan's rivers. The plate tectonics surrounding Alderaan's rivers are divergent causing one, the sea floor to spread making the river larger over time, and two, making the land surrounding the rivers become smaller as the water is continuously breaking down the land masses surrounding it.

Alderaan in 100 years,
Parts of Alderaan's land forms will be further apart from each other caused from Alderann's divergent plates making the river larger, and possibly causing the sea level to rise from the falling debris from the waves crashing into the banks at any given moment. Also, the bridge will most likely need to be extended from the two land masses moving apart from each other. (Bridge picture below)

Alderaan in 1000 years,
Below is a map of Alderaan, the dark blue indicates where water is located. If my assumptions are correct, with the way Alderaans tectonics move, the bottom left hand land mass you see on the map will might actually begin to split off from one, tectonic divergence, and two, the erosion from the rivers surrounding it. Deposition will continue to erode on banks of the river and will continue to meander over the land causing it to eventually split off with the help of the sea floor spreading from plate tectonics. With this, a new coast line will eventually form as the land mass continues to drift off. Finally, Alderaan's hills will eventually become more larger due to the converging plates, causing elevation changes in certain areas.

When playing any video game, especially with today's technology and high visual graphics in computers/gaming systems, people tend to not even realize the geography and landscape of their video game, Alderaan has a beautiful landscape that was well developed by the programmers. In the future, when playing any video/pc game I'll look more to seeing the beauty of geography behind it... Thanks for reading, its been a wonderful semester!

MAY THE FORCE BE WITH YOU!!!

Sources: Map of Alderaan- http://tor.zamimg.com/torhead/images/maps/medium/4611686023868513034/map_alderaan_main.jpg

All other pictures were taken by me.

Nice and Sunny in Alderaan

Alderaan has an atmosphere almost identical to Earth's. From previous pictures we see that the life forms on this planet do not require any type of breathing apparatus, and has one sun just like Earth's. From my knowledge of playing I can see that Alderaan has an atmosphere that protects and acts a shield just like Earth's.

My location in Alderaan is at a higher elevation; from the mountain ranges and forest like landscape, I would consider it to be a Highland climate from the general snowfall, and mountain ranges in the area.

The current snowfall is caused by humidity reaching its dew point which caused precipitation to fall as well as freeze in the air (snow). This snowfall tends to form with an upward motion of air around a low pressure system also known as mid-latitude cyclones.

Currently we can tell Alderaan is experiencing some fair/sunny weather.

Below is a view of Alderaan.













These are fair-weather cumulus clouds. These clouds typically form when warm air rises and reaches a level of cool air, where the moisture in the air condenses, this usually happens through convection, where a part of air is warmer than the surrounding air.













These are cirrus clouds; cirrus clouds are composed of ice crystals that originate from the freezing of water droplets. Cirrus generally occur in fair weather as you can see in the picture. and snow located in the area. This snow is caused by humidity reaching its dew point which caused precipitation to fall as well as freeze in the air (snow).

Transport Limited Slopes/Weathering

Alderaan, for the most part, has many hills and slopes throughout its region. Lets take a look at a permeable slope for example:

(Top View from Mountain)

(Bottom View)


At the top of the mountain you can look below that the slope is permeable as it supports vegetation. The process known as "creeping" results in how vegetation and trees grow. This is a result of Alderaan having a moist climate. As the snow falls, moisture seeps into the soil and as it dries from the sun, it causes a creep in how the trees and vegetation grow.

I can also tell that this is a permeable slope from trees nearby:


I can tell that trees nearby have fallen down indicating biogenic transport. This tree was located at the top of the mountain and died later falling to the ground at the bottom of the hill.

Now let’s take a look at some weathering that has occured around Alderaan's mountains.


If you take a close look at where the snow falls, you can see where the joints are located on this particular mountain. This is most likely due to faulting, folding, or what I believe is due to plate tectonics (from previous blog entry) that crack the rocks in the process.

Here is another picture of some Mass Wasting that has occurred:


Do you see the rocks at the bottom? Those rocks were once part of the mountain but have now taken a fall. This fall that occured, is most likely due to frost weathering. The snow that falls on top of the mountain will later freeze during the night causing the water to expand and exert force inside the cracks of the mountain, causing part of the mountain to fall over time.

Metamorphic Rocks & Plate Tectonics of Alderaan

Below is a quick overview of Alderaan.


One thing we can notice for sure is the certain type of mountain ranges that are made up of foliated metamorphic rock. I can tell its foliated rock because of its distinct alignment pattern resulting from directed pressure from beneath the Earths surface. The rock from the mountain almost looks like black marble. Which makes me concur that the rocks from the mountain are in fact metamorphic rock. (Another picture below to verify).
















We can also see from this picture that there's a lot of faults in the mountain resulting from compression, as well as extension, you can see that some rocks have been pushed together as well as pulled apart (top right of picture).

If you take a look at the video again you will also see many different syncline/anticline folds in the land that result from the compression I showed you in the above picture.

Which leads me to my last point, Alderaan has two types of plate tectonics, one, divergence.

We can tell by this video below:


Do you see how the people of Alderaan had to create a massive bridge? This is because below the surface contains sea floor spreading, over a long period the bridge might need to be extended depending on how fast the ocean floor moves.

Two, we can tell Alderaan has a plate that converges with another. The pressure from one of Alderaans plate is converging over another, we see this by the many mountains that Alderaan currently has. Which can also say why there is so many folds all over Alderaan.

(All photos and videos were taken by me during game-play)

Introduction

Hello readers, My name is Miles Allen McClure and I am creating this blog as an individual project for my class.

My chosen location is the fictional planet of Alderaan, located in the Star Wars universe. Specifically though, I will be observing physical geography of Alderaan in the PC game Star Wars: The Old Republic.

I chose this location because out of the Star Wars planets this particular one has similar qualities of Earth. With that being said, it will make it much more easy to write in detail of my findings in Alderaan. Now that I will be learning more about the forms and processes of physical geography, it's time that I look at video games in greater aspect other than playing for enjoyment, but seeing the view of Alderaan for its beautiful geography that it does have. I look forward to taking this class.

Image from: http://static.desktopnexus.com/thumbnails/479862-bigthumbnail.jpg