How to get your rivers in the right place

[Asharad]

Being Canadian I have to question your view on lakes being more rare than they are usually presented in Fantasy. Honestly most maps I've seen tend to lack lakes in a number I would expect when placed in a northern region that would be subjected to glacier action.

Yep, some areas are covered in lakes. If you've flown over southern Louisiana and SE Texas, you know what I mean. Here's an example from google maps.

[Redrobes]

EDG:
The terrain might raise up to the left but there was a single flat base level which went across the middle of the map to either side. It could have gone either way. It would have been reasonable to have a river going east to west or west to east.

During the sim if the water height is not very much then it does not show so if the water spreads out then it can vanish from the view. I set it not to permeate or evaporate and its running on my GeoTerSys app. There is in fact rain and water all over the map just not very much of it. The app is not ideal either. Its not without problems and differences with the real world. It is objective however, so it can come up with an answer which lacks my bias.

Talroth, Asharad:
Perhaps there are more lakes than I thought. It was a personal observation not really steeped in fact. Our world has some crazy places on it which defies all sensible mapping. Heres a good one...

http://maps.google.co.uk/maps?hl=en&...37708&t=h&z=11

It seems that there is a band across the world from Canada, Norway, Finland, and right across Russia in a small set of latitudes which do have a tremendous amount of lakes. Below that line they get a lot less numerous. But best ignore that statement - some places do have a lot of lakes. I dont know why this is or whether it has anything to do with water tables. I would doubt it. I wonder because of the latitudes that it might be because for some part of the year lots of water is locked up as snow and ice and then later it all thaws into lakes and then refreezes again. Maybe that climate precludes long rivers because theres no continuous steady water flow.

Nomadic:
Sure, should have said rain and snow. It was basically that water has to gain the energy to rise up in height before losing it all as it falls back to the sea.

I am not much of a geographer but have been wrestling with some of these things trying to model them in water flow to try and get the results looking natural. We could do with more expertise with geographers and geologists on this site.

[Midgardsormr]

For convenience's sake, here's a cross-link to another thread on this topic, wherein some information about deltas and coastal formation was discussed.

http://www.cartographersguild.com/showthread.php?t=2927

I'll also link that thread to this one.

[Hoel]

We have lakes, lots and lots of lakes of all different sizes. The reason (at leas according to what they told me in school) is the ice age.
The ice ran through the mountains of the nothern hemisphere and gouged out valleys and hollows, You can see them everywhere here, and left huge freshwater seas and lakes. These lakes drained at the end of the ice age but left millions of of smaller lakes scattered about. Since there is a lot of water coming in through rain and snow and less draining due to the shape of the ice age terrain and the colder climate, they're still around.
I grew up on a the bottom of a lake. A 5000 year old lake perhaps, but you can still take a shovel out into the area and find the old sediment layers and see where the shoreline were, it's alot dryer and less fertile soil. The big lake left a string of dozens of smaller lakes, from Hornborgarsjön to Lången.

A side note about the lake, a local amateur archeologist and historian called McKeys wrote a book where he fits the Beowulf saga in around this lake. if you belive his research (it's a bit sketchy but may be plausible) it would have taken place right in my back yard, he even points out a possible burial mound where he could have been buried.
Beowulf would have been called Björn thou, Beowulf=Bee Wolf (Biulv)=Bear=Björn
Now i'm rambling again.

There are lakes, lots of them everywhere. I think we underestimate how many bodies of water there is actually. If you have a nice depression with a trickle of water coming in, there will be a lake, or a pond, or a pool, or a swamp or a puddle.

[Momotron]

Some great advice, I had to do a lot of searching on other factors with water such as the different types of bodies and it's been influencing my map. this was a nice resource.

[Wildeman40]

Thanks for all your hard work!

[Stoj]

Thanks for all the great info! You've already helped immeasurably in the next revision for my novel's world map. I suppose this area of the map will have to change now. Apologies in advance for what must make you twitch when you see it!

[Robert_Browny]

Great tips, thank you so much!!!

[FerryK]

Love the Tips, Thank you

[Duke Ironfist]

Yes, being Canadian as well, I found the statement that lakes are rare interesting indeed. Your point of Northern Glaciation is right on the money!