# Tag Info

52

It's Chimborazo, Ecuador, but only just, beating Huascarán, Peru, by less than 50 metres. Both are over 2 km 'higher' than Everest. I made a plot of some mountains — height above centre of the earth vs absolute latitude. You can download the IPython Notebook source code here. Warning: v. hacky. I can't find anything on the position of the centre of the ...

21

Mount Chimborazo, which is 6,268 meters above sea level and within 1.5 degrees of the equator. More specifically, according to Dr. Milbert, Chief Geodesist, NOAA, National Geodetic Survey and Dr. Shum, Geodetic Science & Surveying, Ohio State Univ.: distance from Earth's center of mass, with an uncertainty of only +/- 2 meters: Mt. Chimborazo - 6384....

17

Forming of coastline During the last ice age, the North Sea was dry. When the ice melted sea levels slowly started to rise again and due to tides and currents a barrier of dunes was formed along what approximately is today's coast line. This created an area of land that fell dry during ebb-tide and flooded during high tide (this can still be seen in the '...

12

Using the eTopo1 data Eakins and Sharman has calculated a hypsographic curve for the earth. In the elevation span between + 6 to -6 m they found that land area will change by 396 000 km2 per meter sea level change. In the range -7 to -51 m below current sea level the land area will change by 251 000 km2 per meter sea level. Thus to get an area the size of ...

11

I guess there are multiple names, but I know it as the river's "long profile", and it is used in academic papers (one example here and a search in google scholar here). But you can find similar diagrams under names like the river's height profile, longitudinal profile, longitudinal map or geographic profile. These last two are the ones used in an Australian ...

10

Those are bathymetric survey tracks. The survey artifacts are very straight and regular in character, compared to geological features. What you're seeing is an increased level of detail along the survey line, which contrasts with the relatively smooth background model. I labeled some of the features in this answer to a related question: NOAA Reference: ...

9

I'll begin with your second question, as to how mountains erode. To simplify things, there are two methods: Physical weathering, where the rocks are broken down by weather. For example, there are cracks in rocks that get filled by water which freezes and expands. This maker the cracks bigger and breaks down the rock. Also wind, earthquakes and any other ...

8

Oceanic topography of the sea surface $\zeta$ can be defined as the height of the sea surface relative to a particular level surface, the geoid. The geoid to be the level surface that coincided with the surface of the ocean at rest (a list of geoids with application to oceanography can be found in Talone et al., 2014). Variations in sea surface height (...

8

The largest desalination plant is the sun - with its action on the oceans and turning sea water into fresh water (by evaporation->clouds->rain) it has more capacity than any man made structure to pump ocean water. To "store" rain water would require the damming of a significant body of water - but you would have to tolerate a significant rise in the water ...

7

Topography, in the eyes of Earth Scientists, is the study of the surface features of the Earth (or other planet), and includes all features of that surface, natural or artificial. From the Oxford Dictionary: 1.The arrangement of the natural and artificial physical features of an area Topography comes from the Greek topos, meaning 'place'. It is a study of ...

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The best solution to this type of problem would be to desalinate all excess water at shorelines. This could be done with desalination plants that use their own energy produced from tidal/wave generators. There are plenty of empty reservoirs in the world that would be happy to take any excess water that is desalinated. I'm assuming if we can build ...

5

Map elements and signatures Every signature used in the map (except of elevation contour lines) has to be explained in the legend. For example, the dashed line is not explained. Your map needs a scale bar or at least a numeric scale. Look for better signatures for the street/path and choose one for the river. To complete it, a topographic map is always ...

4

This is an interesting and common question, so I'll try to give a good answer here, that I think is a good place, as well as GIS and Open Data SE. First, regarding the format, you will never find data natively stored in text or tabular form, because the large data volume would lead to huge files very difficult to handle. Data is usually stored in binary ...

4

As @gerrit commented, a precise calculation would need to incorporate a litospheric model to account for isostatic post-glacial rebound. But the "blurry approximation" you want, can be obtained based only on topographic data. This approximation would be reasonably accurate if the melting of the ice happens quickly. For this, we need topographic data of the ...

4

Based on USGS (Department of the Interior – United States Geological Survey) toopgraphic maps, where on a 7.5 min Quadrangle map, the contour interval is commonly 40 feet. Larger maps 15 min to 1'-2' maps the interval is commonly 80-100 feet. All maps of the United States are commonly sourced from USGS based maps. I am certain Google or Google's map ...

3

Pump the water somewhere it will freeze and remain so. Who's buying? My question would be if it's economically viable. If we can put man on the moon and send probes outside our solar system I see no reason why we can't perform the basic task of freezing water and putting it back where it belongs where we want it. Only at the precipice do we change. When ...

2

Determining an uplift rate for rocks is not easy, but certain techniques will produce far more reliable results than others. There are also qualitative techniques that provide estimates so rough as to be almost useless. For example, this technique, from the 'answer', above: So you know this used to be at the sea floor, let's say 300 meters below the ...

2

Some hints to get you thinking. Remember contours are lines joining points of the same elevation. Let's say the island is in the ocean - what is the elevation of the shore-line around the island? If it is in a lake above sea level, would the elevation of the shore be different in different places? So could a contour line run into the shore the way you ...

2

I don't know for sure, but my guess is that at least a part of the high Iberian elevation is due to NNE-SSW compression in northeast Spain, caused by rotation of the Iberian block. That is,the same rotation that opened up the Bay of Biscay deep basin, whilst compressing the Pyrennean mountains. The gentle dip of most of Iberia towards the southwest would fit ...

1

The hill to the south in your map is called Palm Hill, probably because of its somewhat resemblance to a palm frond. It is an erosion-resistant hill or knoll that protrudes above the surrounding alluvial plain. As @KnobScratcher points out, the feature is the result of erosion in that it created the alluvial plain that surrounds the knoll. Erosion also ...

1

Tectonic processes and erosion. Well.....obviously: all surface features on our globe are caused, at base, by tectonics (uplift or subsidence) and erosion (knocking down or burying). To simplify: shifting plates cause mountains to build and basin to form and water falling from the sky erodes the rock and fills valleys with sand and gravel. That, however, ...

1

A more localised, and not applicable to the whole of Iberia, but perhaps worth a mention might be the proposed crustal delamination of southern Spain.

1

A combination of the Opening Atlantic and push of Africa...my guess is failure of the ocean-continent contact of western Iberia in a couple of million years leading to subduction... If no hints for differences in density, the elevation must be sustained by external forces. In this sw corner of Eurasia the only continent-continent collision between Africa ...

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