Obviously they wouldn't be mangroves per se since mangroves are tropical and don't like cold water (which is presumably why you don't find them in the Namib desert it's a typical coastal desert with a cold sea). Thing is that's Earth but I can't figure any reason why a similar type of thing couldn't evolve in my fantasy world? (Evolve without handwavium that is).
Of course coastal desert with mangrove exists around the Red Sea but I think that's not your typical 'natural' desert (I might be wrong) and it's round an inland sea which doesn't really work (well it might but I'd have to completely redraw my map and figure out how to stick it in a rainshadow).
I have read so much about deserts and ocean currents (and why I intended to put my desert in the one place it absolutely would not be and now I'm trying to flip my map) in the past few days that my head is spinning now.
So can someone confirm that the South-East of a Northern hemisphere continent is somewhere you absolutely wouldn't find a desert due to tropical storms? Or is my source oversimplifying?
Becky
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5,292 / 50,000
Mei 5, 2008 - 03 47
Define East - if you're in a sphere (or hemisphere) there's no such thing. We've defined it by certain continents on Earth, but in a different world the continents would be different, so East in this case doesn't mean much.
Now the South of the Northern hemisphere - sure, you can get deserts there. That's where the Sahara is, after all. Just so long as it's either a long way inland or blocked from the sea by mountains, and fairly near the equator. Or if you want a coastal desert cold ocean currents on the coasts of continents will promote desert environment because they tend to have quite dry air. So if you happen to have an air current coming straight down from up North (which can happen) you may get a desert which will be hot (despite the fact the air coming from over the sea is cold) and dry.
The other questions I'm not sure about, I'm afraid.
51,017 / 50,000
Mei 5, 2008 - 04 42
East is the direction in which the sun seems to rise on the equinox assuming the planet seems to spin counterclockwise when seen from above the north pole and clockwise when seen from above the south pole. Of course some people get even more relative and say that the north pole is always the one that seems to spin counterclockwise even if its spin is retrogade compared to most other planets in the system (which means that Venus is upside down and the sun still rises in the East). Since the whole climate thing is to do with the Coriolis Effect this definition works.
5,292 / 50,000
Mei 5, 2008 - 05 13
Wow, that sounds intelligent.
I just figured that wherever you happened to be standing on Earth, you could always go East. There's no line where East becomes West, so you can always go further East. So East is a direction rather than a place, unlike North or South which have definite points where you can go no further North or South.
But I'm not very knowledgeable about this, so you can ignore me.
0 / 50,000
Mei 5, 2008 - 15 17
Can't help you with the deserts much, although I would assume that to some extent it would depend on the size and shape of the landmasses.
As for the mangroves, I live in New Zealand, which is not even sub-tropical, and we have a lot of mangroves here. I don't know what the water temperature is, but even in the north (hottest part) the air temperature gets down to 4 or 5 degrees C at night in winter, and the mangroves keep on living.
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SF08: Gethsemane - Thriller
SF08: Shooting - Comedy - 105 pages - done
Good luck to you all.
4,468 / 50,000
Mei 5, 2008 - 17 30
When you say cold, how cold are we talking?
You could certainly design a water-dwelling rooty plant that lives in cold waters. No problem there. If the water gets cold enough to freeze, your plants will obviously need to adapt to that (possibly by hibernating, or just dying off and regrowing later), but I see no problem with the general idea.
And deserts can occur at any latitude, from the poles to the equator. You get a desert when local conditions prevent rain and there's no water sources on the ground, so plant life is very limited. Simple enough.
----------I had a soul ... but NaNoWriMo eated it. :(
Breeder of Plot Wolverines
51,017 / 50,000
Mei 5, 2008 - 22 06
Not freezing cold but cold water current (eg Humboldt) cold.
And deserts can occur at any latitude, from the poles to the equator. You get a desert when local conditions prevent rain and there's no water sources on the ground, so plant life is very limited. Simple enough.
That's the thing. My source basically says no deserts in the south-east (without a rainshadow) of a Northern Hemisphere Continent because the Corealis Effect means that is Cyclone territory which means it will be too wet.
Becky
4,468 / 50,000
Mei 5, 2008 - 23 45
What source is this?
If you want a desert, make a desert. You mentioned "rain shadow." Even if this cyclone thing is accurate (it sounds oversimplified but I'm not a meteorologist, so what do I know), if you put mountains in the right places, you can keep rain from reaching an area. If it's important to your story, that's what you should do.
Also, if you're inventing a new planet, you don't have to make it anything like Earth. You can give it a different axis tilt, different rotation speed, different orbit speed, bigger, smaller, different atmosphere ... any one of those factors will rearrange the weather.
----------I had a soul ... but NaNoWriMo eated it. :(
Breeder of Plot Wolverines
55,160 / 50,000
Mei 5, 2008 - 23 43
It's your own world. If you get everything figured out logically, then I think it can happen. Remember, as I'm sure you do, that real worlds have to obey all the "laws of nature", that a hurricane can't occur very far inland, and fish can't fly without many special adaptations, and if you make it all seem believable, very few readers are going to complain.
51,017 / 50,000
Mei 7, 2008 - 11 22
Source and yeah it is simplified but as near as I can tell it is roughly correct. But I'm not a climatologist either.
As to Rain Shadow... the main problem with that is I wanted a coastal desert with mangrove like coastal ecology. I'm currently looking a solution involving an Endoheric Lake (eg the Caspian Sea) ... but Endoheric Lake don't have tides and I've always thought of Mangroves as a tidal ecology
17,300 / 50,000
Mei 7, 2008 - 20 15
Hot deserts are typically found at around 30 degrees latitude, and from what I studied in climatology class, tropical cyclones occur 5-20 degrees lat and with ocean surface temperatures of at least 26 degrees C. They do travel from east to west, so your eastern coast could be at risk. Assuming that atmospheric circulation is similar on your world.
But I think just using cardinal directions is a bit of an oversimplification because the size, shape, latitude and topography of your continent could change a lot of things. For one thing, if you must have a coastal desert on the southeastern (how far south are we talking about really?) coast: I can't say for certain, but if you truly can't have one facing the open ocean due to precipitation from tropical storms, a harbour could provide protection, or even islands blocking the path of the cyclone. And there shouldn't be much regular rain if it's a desert belt.
I don't know much about mangrove physiology. Do they need a lot of precipitation? I don't think temperature is much of a factor. Given a sheltered, estuarine and sediment-rich habitat, I don't see why mangrove-like plants can't grow there. Like a mangrove version of a temperate rainforest. I think the important thing you need is a sound that's not too steep.
51,017 / 50,000
Mei 8, 2008 - 10 17
Lucky Seafan,
Excellent this is the sort of information I needed. I thought her information seemed a bit too simple.
No Mangroves don't need a lot of precipitation afaik. They live quite happily on the shores of the Red Sea which is definately desert and the main source of me thinking about an inland sea as a possibility. They are however pretty cold intolerant according most sources which is why they haven't spread into area like the Atacama in spite of being found in some other arid and semi-arid coatstal areas in Peru. They can only colonise areas not influenced by the Humboldt current.
Everything I'm reading is nudging me towards an inland sea be it an endoheric lake or a more conventional inland sea like the Black and Baltic Seas. The fact they tend to be brackish helps (though apparently the Red Sea is very saline... guess it all depends how much water is coming in compared to evaporation). Since the continent I'm currently working on in my worldbuilding is actually a supercontinent an inland sea caused by a remenent of ocean being trapped by continental drift seems feasible. After all they exist in our world.
Becky
17,300 / 50,000
Mei 8, 2008 - 18 37
I'm glad I could help! (Over)simplification can be difficult to avoid in climatology since there are too many variables involved. What bothered me was the lack of latitudinal variation mentioned:
Southwest is desert, southeast is tropical storms and regular rain, northwest is very wet, northeast is well-watered, and north-south corridors have tornadoes.
Although I suppose it works for North America and Eurasia. Especially North America.
If you're making up your own plants, you have more flexibility. And I wouldn't worry about the plausibility of an inland sea or something related. No one could possibly look at your map and say, "That's wrong. Tectonic activity would occur like this and put this thing here instead of that thing there." =p
51,017 / 50,000
Mei 9, 2008 - 14 17
Although I suppose it works for North America and Eurasia. Especially North America.
Yeah I have to admit that on reading it the first time I though "huh? Not all continents are North America."
This is quite good fun as well you pick your latitude and answer some questions and it shows you typical real world examples. :-)
Becky