Go with the Fluvial...Landscapes?

Another important feature of Un’Goro Crater’s geography is the river that cuts through the upper part of the crater. The river starts at the Shaper’s Terrace in the Northeastern part of the crater and flows west. 

The waterfall from which the river starts from in the mountains. 
Photo Credit: Paige Okamoto

The river is a perennial river, meaning that it flows year round. Some rivers depend on the season or rain fall to have water in them. Un’Goro Crater is able to support a perennial river because as a rainforest, it rains quite a bit year round. And, as a crater, it is set low into the water table, making water easily accessible to the surface.

However, this also makes the crater prone to flooding. The crater is set deep into the water table so when heavy rains come, there is nowhere for the water to sink it to land. It will just stay on the surface and flood the crater. 

The river is not crystal clear by any means, however it doesn’t have large sediment materials flowing through it. It had a suspended load, meaning that the materials flowing through it are not microscopic but are not very large either. This gives the effect of murky looking water.

The river appears murky because of the small particles of sediment flowing through it. 
Photo Credit: Paige Okamoto

This river displays both types of channeling patters; meandering and braided. When the river is meandering is means that it is flowing smoothly, without interruption. When the river is braided, it means that there are islands or obstructions in its path that force it to flow around the obstructions.

The river displays braided channeling around these small islands. 
Photo Credit: Paige Okamoto

The river is an important feature in the landscape and provides necessary nourishment to the life that lives in the crater.

The World Around Us Is Crumbling...No, Really.

Like all beautiful things, Un'goro Crater cannot last forever. All rocks decay and Un'Goro Crater is no exception. All one must do is take a closer look at all the rock formations inside the crater to understand this.

The biggest factor of decay here is root decay. There are plants everywhere, growing all over the rock faces. In fact, most of the rocks appear green because they are so covered by various types of lichen and moss. Root decay occurs when roots take hold in small crevices of rocks, and as the plant grows, it beings to break apart the rock.

Here are roots wrapping themselves around these rock formations, digging into crevices and slowly breaking down the rock.

There are so much plant life growing on the rocks here that the rocks appear to be green in color.

 
Salt decay also seems to be a large issue in the crater. Many of the rock faces show evidence of salt decay, which manifests itself as white coloring on the rocks. It can be seen in the photo below, right behind the palm tree on the right hand side. Salt decay happens when water moves through fractures in the rocks, leaving precipitate behind to crystallize, slowly breaking down the rock.

I'm sure the portal has nothing to do with rock decay...However, look, more root decay!

There are also signs of pressure release, pictured in the rock formation below. Large shells have split off the sides of the rock from pressure. This is a much faster decay process than most. This rock also portrays spheroidal weathering very well, portrayed in the rounded edges at the top.

There is also probably some thermal expansion and contraction decay going on here because this rock formation is located next to a large set of hot springs that provide constant heat to the rock.

Here you can see the hot springs on both sides of the rock. There also appears to be some salt decay on the formation as well.

 
 There are many types of decay in action in Un'Goro Crater. One can never be sure they identified them all. But one can be sure of the fact that wind did not create any of these structures.

Let's Get Physical

In the middle of Un’Goro Crater lies Fire Plume Ridge, and as the map shows, it’s just a giant volcano (it’s actually not that big. Poor scaling on the cartographer’s end).

However, this means the area is rich in igneous rock; specifically extrusive igneous rock because it has cooled on the Earth’s surface. This has also led to the creation of obsidian or volcanic glass. Obsidian is a mafic, or dark colored, mineral. And just because I can’t mine obsidian with my mining pick does not mean that it’s not there, I KNOW it’s there, physical geography tells me so, you can’t fool me Blizzard.

See, not that big. Not much taller than that palm tree...which also is not that big.

The big question is how this volcano formed. A clue to answering this question lies in the mountainous borders of the crater. The mountains are high and ring the crater. In my professional opinion, it would seem that these mountains were formed by the convergence of one of more tectonic plates. In fact, it would seem that multiple plates collided around Un’Goro Crater to form the near perfect circular mountain border (the perfection of the cicrle is actually quite weird). The plates collided and the impacting crust was pushed upwards, forming the mountains. This is called convergence. 

These collisions, as you can imagine, would have caused alterations to the surrounding crust. The shock waves sent through could have caused the crust to rupture, allowing hot magma from the asthenosphere to push through the lithosphere onto the Earth’s surface, thus effectively starting the formation of a volcano. 

Oh those mountains. So tall. So green.

Still can't explain the dinosaurs.

Places, Names and Stuff

Hello there, my name is Paige Okamoto and I am originally from Hawaii. But don't worry, I'm not doing my blog on that so relax! I don't even find Hawaii all that interesting.

World of Warcraft is a vast and wonderful world as you may know. And it is from this world that I have selected to explore the wonderful implications of physical geography. Specifically, I will be focusing on Un'Goro Crater. Located on the planet Azeroth, on the continent of Kalimdor, Un'Goro Crater is a lush area of fantastical mystery. 

Here's a little map of the whole thing since it's, you know, not a real place.

The reason I want to my project on Un'Goro Crater is that is that World of Warcraft is close to my heart, and the fact that Un'Goro Crater has dinosaurs. Do I really need any other reasons? I don't think so.

Though there is the lovely excuse of having to play World of Warcraft because of homework.

See, dinosaurs.