GlobalTe

Simple tools to extract and plot a global model of effective elastic thickness (T_e) of the lithosphere. This T_e model was obtained from the inversion of the wavelet coherence between the topography and Bouguer gravity anomalies. See Audet and Burgmann (2011) for details.

See also the software PlateFlex, which describes how to produce regional grids of T_e using the wavelet transform.

Installation

Dependencies

The current version was developed using Python3.7 Also, the following packages are required:

• numpy
• matplotlib
• cartopy

Conda environment

We recommend creating a custom conda environment where GlobalTe can be installed along with its dependencies.

• Create a environment called te and install all dependencies:

conda create -n te python=3.7 numpy matplotlib cartopy -c conda-forge

• Activate the environment:

conda activate te

• Clone the GlobalTe repository and install using pip:

git clone https://github.com/paudetseis/GlobalTe.git
cd GlobalTe
pip install .

Usage

Once installed, you can produce a T_e map with three lines in Python:

>>> from globalte import TeModel as TM
>>> model = TM()
>>> model.plot_global()

You can also specify to load a data set that does not include data points biased by gravitational noise. You can also check out a different global projection and a different colormap:

>>> model_nobias = TM(nobias=True)
>>> model_nobias.plot_global(proj='IGH', cmap='magma')

The corresponding T_e grids are available as attributes of the model object:

>>> model.te_global
array([[nan, nan, nan, ..., nan, nan, nan],
       [nan, nan, nan, ..., nan, nan, nan],
       [nan, nan, nan, ..., nan, nan, nan],
       ...,
       [nan, nan, nan, ..., nan, nan, nan],
       [nan, nan, nan, ..., nan, nan, nan],
       [nan, nan, nan, ..., nan, nan, nan]])

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NOTE

Most data points are NaN since T_e is only calculated over dry areas (including shallow shelf areas).

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It is also possible to extract a T_e value at any arbitrary point on the globe:

>>> model.get_te_point(62.3, -125.7)
44.9015197754

Reference

• Audet, P. and Burgmann, R. Dominant role of tectonic inheritance in supercontinent cycles, Nat. Geosci., 4, 184-187, 2011