Monday, 21 September 2015

The Meriga Project - summary maps

The blogger and author John Michael Greer wrote the book Star's Reach set centuries after the decline of industrial civilisation in the wake of resource depletion and climate change.
He is now looking for stories for a shared-world anthology set in the same world as Star's Reach, the Meriga Project. In the 25th century, the Greenland ice cap and most of Antarctic ice have melted leaving sea level 50m higher than at present. It is possible to view the effect of this at websites like flood.firetree.net.

I thought it worthwhile however to make my own maps of this world in QGIS. I have used the CleanTopo2 digital elevation model. For reference I mark present day coastlines and borders from the Global Self-consistent, Hierarchical, High-resolution Geography Database (NOAA) and the locations of major urban areas >750k inhabitants, from Nordpil (based on data from the UN Population Division).

I have used an Equidistant Conic Projection for the continental scale ones, and Albers Equal Area Projection for the more close-up ones. Most of the maps have a scale of 1:30 million if printed at A4. I link to full-size JPGs of the maps at my own website.

I have not included Antarctica so far, I may do so later if I get hold of a decent bedrock DEM and make some reasonable assumptions about remnant ice sheets at this point.

The northern part of N America, comprising present-day USA, Canada and Greenland. full-size version
The former USA and Central America. full-size version
South America. full-size version
North Africa. The Jordan valley and Dead Sea basin is not in fact flooded, since 50m sea level rise is not enough to make the connection from the Mediterranean. full-size version
Southern Africa. full-size version
Northern Asia. full-size version

SE Asia. full-size version

SW Asia. full-size version

Australasia. Note the sea does not actually flood the Lake Eyre basin in Australia (link). full-size version


Europe. The Jordan valley and Dead Sea basin is not in fact flooded, since 50m sea level rise is not enough to make the connection from the Mediterranean. full-size version
A closer view of eastern Canada and NE USA. This has a different projection which if I remember rightly was Albers Equal Area Conic. full-size version

SW USA. full-size version
SE USA. full-size version
N Europe. full-size version


S Europe. full-size version



1 comment:

  1. Fascinating. Thanks for all the work you put into this project.

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