Geodynamic diagnostics, scientific visualisation and StagLab 3.0
<p>Today's geodynamic models can, often do and sometimes have to become very complex. Their underlying, increasingly elaborate numerical codes produce a growing amount of raw data. Post-processing such data is therefore becoming more and more important, but also more challenging and ti...
Main Author: | |
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Format: | Article |
Language: | English |
Published: |
Copernicus Publications
2018-06-01
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Series: | Geoscientific Model Development |
Online Access: | https://www.geosci-model-dev.net/11/2541/2018/gmd-11-2541-2018.pdf |
Summary: | <p>Today's geodynamic models can, often do and sometimes have to become very
complex. Their underlying, increasingly elaborate numerical codes produce a
growing amount of raw data. Post-processing such data is therefore becoming
more and more important, but also more challenging and time-consuming. In
addition, visualising processed data and results has, in times of coloured
figures and a wealth of half-scientific software, become one of the weakest
pillars of science, widely mistreated and ignored. Efficient and automated
geodynamic diagnostics and sensible scientific visualisation preventing
common pitfalls is thus more important than ever. Here, a collection of
numerous diagnostics for plate tectonics and mantle dynamics is provided and
a case for truly scientific visualisation is made. Amongst other diagnostics
are a most accurate and robust plate-boundary identification, slab-polarity
recognition, plate-bending derivation, surface-topography component splitting
and mantle-plume detection. Thanks to powerful image processing tools and
other elaborate algorithms, these and many other insightful diagnostics are
conveniently derived from only a subset of the most basic parameter fields. A
brand new set of scientific quality, perceptually
uniform colour maps including <i>d</i><i>e</i><i>v</i><i>o</i><i>n</i>, <i>d</i><i>a</i><i>v</i><i>o</i><i>s</i>, <i>o</i><i>s</i><i>l</i><i>o</i> and <i>b</i><i>r</i><i>o</i><i>c</i> is
introduced and made freely available
(<a href="http://www.fabiocrameri.ch/colourmaps" target="_blank">http://www.fabiocrameri.ch/colourmaps</a>, last access: 25 June 2018).
These novel colour maps bring a significant advantage over misleading,
non-scientific colour maps like <i>r</i><i>a</i><i>i</i><i>n</i><i>b</i><i>o</i><i>w</i>, which is shown to introduce a
visual error to the underlying data of up to 7.5 %. Finally,
<span style="" class="text smallcaps">StagLab</span> (<a href="http://www.fabiocrameri.ch/StagLab" target="_blank">http://www.fabiocrameri.ch/StagLab</a>, last access:
25 June 2018) is introduced, a software package that incorporates the whole
suite of automated geodynamic diagnostics and, on top of that, applies
state-of-the-art scientific visualisation to produce publication-ready
figures and movies, all in the blink of an eye and all fully reproducible.
<span style="" class="text smallcaps">StagLab</span>, a simple, flexible, efficient and reliable tool made freely
available to everyone, is written in MATLAB and adjustable for use with
geodynamic mantle convection codes.</p> |
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ISSN: | 1991-959X 1991-9603 |