The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) is a scientific agency that is part of the U.S. Government’s Department of Interior. Its scientists study geology and earth sciences, as well as the natural hazards that threaten it. While contracted to the USGS, I was one of the authors that published a report of carbon data in the Arctic Ocean.
What They Needed
- A simple way to analyze and display the complex three-dimensional data both on the website and on a poster
- A version of the report that could be distributed both on the web and on CD
The Solution
We had several large datasets containing up to 354,000 three-dimensional ocean chemistry measurements. We needed to be able to display this data on a map. Unfortunately, Excel cannot plot data on geographic maps, nor could ArcGIS plot three-dimensional maps at the time.
To solve the problem, I wrote a Mathematica script that consolidated over 50 two-dimensional figures into 4 three-dimensional figures. We plotted those figures on a three-dimensional bathymetric grid of the ocean floor, allowing the entire dataset to be displayed on a single poster. Coupled with the animation of the 3D dataset that I created with Mathematica, our poster was one of the most talked about at the 2010 American Geophysical Union Fall Meeting.
The Publication
Using a template that the USGS provided, I also built them a simple HTML website that hosted everything from the project.
- Raw Cruise Data
- XML Metadata
- GIS Shapefiles
- Graphs, Figues, and Plots
- Our published paper
We published the final report in 2013.