GPlates: Continent Collisions - Worldbuilder’s Log 16

What to do when continents collide

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LINKS:

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MUSIC:

Udo Grunewald

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TIMESTAMPS:

00:00 Intro
00:13 A New Way to Calculate Added Terrain
01:46 Forgotten Island Arcs & Subduction Zones
02:20 Continent Collision
04:28 Moving the Other Continents
05:23 Cleaning Up the Collision
14:50 Craton Considerations
15:27 Coupling Collided Continents
19:13 Flowline Reconstruction & New Ocean Crust
19:25 Island Arc - Island Arc Collision Cosiderations
20:00 Future Subduction Zone Considerations
21:45 Outro

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Thanks for watching everyone. It means a lot. 🥰

[MasterTMO]

I would like to see you do a full world at the end of this, from start to finish, with full complexity. This is all extremely interesting, and I intend to do one of my own when you're finished with the series.

[omnipixilgaming]

I've been anxiously stalling the rest of my worldbuilding process because I want to complete the tectonic plates first and GPlates is DAUNTING. Thank goodness you're quite literally walking me through every step of this incomprehensible program

[Dragrath]

5:25 Actually funnily enough continents *can* sometimes overlap IRL during a tectonically fast subduction zone margin collision. Seismic tomography has revealed that in the case of the Himalayas continental subduction has occurred corresponding to roughly 50% of the original Indian sub continent. The main difference is that when this happens neither mass of continental crust sinks down into the mantle rather instead they pile up on top of each other. In the case of the Himalayas this zone of overlap is what we call the Tibetan Plateau. The plate boundary for this ongoing collision still has the same architecture as a normal subduction zone. The scale is pretty amazing

As for other comments last weekend during Nick Zentner's livestreamed Baja BC series interview/discussion with Karin Sigloch & Mitch Mihalynuk there was a section where Mitch Mihalynuk showed some G plates animations which might be interesting for anyone who wants to take a look at a reconstruction of the complex collisions to form the modern West Coast of North America. The video Section was titled : R. Fixed Archipelago ... with Karin Sigloch & Mitch Mihalynuk

The animation involves North America ramming into a mature volcanic arc complex after rifting apart from Pangaea during the Jurassic to Cretaceous time period and it is based on paleomagnetic seismic tomography and geochemical/geophysical lines of evidence integrated together. I particularly want to bring attention to the formation of Alaska with volcanic arcs getting folded up into each other its quite breathtaking even in a simplified animation.

[carginfer]

Once the gplates section has finished, will you do a walk through of the main geological events of the world you commissioned or are you going to jump straight to the climate and biomes? Will you show how the climate changes when big events happen (like two continents meeting or splitting)?
I don't want to overwhelm you. Just curious about how you will structure stuff. Go at your own pace, we'll watch it all :]

[purplemosasaurus]

Artifexian: "For the sake of completion, I'm gonna do that."
Captions: "For the sake of pollution, I'm gonna do that."
🤣

[rocko]

This series makes my day when I see a new episode

[lzrdkng]

really loving this series! This is the level of world building that i respect on a deep personal level

[gigonio]

i know you just uploaded this one, but i already can't wait for the next one xD

[diegoscb]

I have a deep sense of respect for all that you are doing here

[MegaMinerd]

Are you planning to use this example in later steps or will you make a full simulation for that? If you do the latter, perhaps you could do it as a timelapse in the background of a quick review and a discussion of what's next.

[MrKZee]

Every f*cking video, I think that it can't get nerdier than that
And then some guy writes Edgar with a bunch of scientific explanation for how to calculate things😆😆😆😆
Love it!!!!

[chariot]

Such a good series. Would love to see someone do this but incredibly detailed.

[AntipaladinPedigri]

3:14 Artifexian: *creates two pigeons*
Artifexian: now kiss

[Qfeys]

At 12:15, I think you made a logical error. You say that the island arc is 20 Mya, but that is the moment since you have drawn the island arc. The convention from an earlier video is that we only draw the island arc once they are 50Mya, as before that, they are basically nothing (as you calculated). That does mean that for the calculation of created terrain, we should take our start date as the moment the subduction zones have gone active. That is the moment when terrain starts appearing.
So your calculation should be: 900km * 70 My *.5 km/My = 31500 km².
This also counts for the other accreations, which should have 50My extra.

[jaecohen]

30 minutes until I go to work... I can squeeze it in ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[oilychefofblackpepper]

babe wake up, new artie world building video is out

[MCPhssthpok]

I've been playing with GPlates and coming up with my own processes for when these collisions take place so it's interesting to see the differences with how you're doing it.

One thing I noticed is that you made the same mistake as me in referring to accreted "terrains" when the correct spelling is apparently "terranes" in this context.

[laMoria]

Important : when coupling continent, you need to reload the rotation file before resetting the anchored plate to 000, otherwise it gives you weird stuff

[pointyorb]

My simulation ended up having a continent collision within the first 200 million years lol

[rg_fella]

One of these days, I want him to say "Good morning, Interweb" like Robin Williams says "Good morning, Vietnam"