Hand-Drawn Map- Looking for advice on watersheds, geology and possible microbiomes
Hey everyone, looking for some feedback on my continental map.
My main goal is to keep the geography, geology, and watersheds as realistic as possible without creating impossible landscapes. I plan on drawing a much larger version of this next, but I wanted to get some tips and feedback before I get started on the final piece. The setting takes place on a planet that is about 1.8 times the size of Earth, so I'm trying to figure out how higher gravity and heavy runoff would affect things like mountain erosion and water flow.
To be totally honest, I really didn't know what I was doing with the tectonic plate layer. I mostly just used random shapes of varying sizes to mimic what I thought were good enough "plates" and "micro-plates". I wanted it to be a more chaotic super-earth type planet, so the planet is made of smaller, more broken up tectonic plates, and the main continent sits on one of the planet's largest tectonic plates, while the surrounding crust is shattered into smaller micro-plates slowly crashing, sliding, and moving all around. Definitely open to feedback on how to make my plate layouts better and movement more realistic for my next attempt.
For the general layout, the north and south poles are massive ice-capped landmasses that freeze the nearby oceans solid, connecting the separate continents. The main landmass is bisected by a prominent mountain range that acts as a major weather barrier. Both the eastern and western sides open up into flat plains, but with completely opposite climates. The western plains are part of a lush, dense forested canyon network, while the eastern plains shift into a sweeping, arid savanna landscape. Up north, a rough snowy mountain range comes off the ice sheets and feeds into a massive, cold wetlands basin and a network of hidden grottos, with underground rivers and cave systems carved out by the heavy glacial runoff through the mountain roots.
Because the scale on this basic sketch is so small, I haven't been able to physically draw in the actual plains boundaries, surface lakes, or the deep water tables yet. I'm really looking for advice on how a high-gravity watershed would actually behave; How should I route the rivers realistically from the northern peaks down into the lower plains? Also, how would massive underground cave systems, pressurized water tables, and deep reservoirs have formed/exist under a bigger planets higher gravity? What kind of unique ecosystems like massive swamps, inland lakes, or hidden grottos of different "microbiomes" might naturally pop up around these zones based on my layout? Any thoughts or tips on how to keep this grounded would be greatly appreciated!