Geosoft - Exploring With Data

From two monitors

Sometimes the most frustrating things can be simple to solve… Normally, in the office, I use two monitors. Recently, while travelling with my laptop, I opened my Geosoft workspace and my maps were unreachable on the “other” monitor.   Uh oh…

Usually, when applications disappear onto the “other” screen, I can right click on the Task Bar and use the Move option and arrow keys to bring them back, but I can't do this for my maps, and I didn't want to create a new Geosoft Project.

 

Eureka! Using the menu item Window > Cascade realigned all my open Geosoft files on the single laptop monitor – Whew! 

Finding Data with Dapple

There has been lots of buzz lately about finding data. 

 

The other day someone asked me where they could find geology data for Namibia using Dapple.  Searching for spatial data has numerous challenges associated with it (just try searching for “Namibia geology” in your usual search tools) that I won’t get into here. Instead I’d like to share my suggestions with you.

 

Using Dapple, first I selected the country I’m interested in from the Overview Map list. This sets my spatial search ‘area of interest’. 

 

  

 

Then I entered my keyword “geology”.  

 

 

 

The results in my Server list didn’t turn up anything that I found to be useful. But the results in the Web tab were much more useful!

 

The Web tab accesses a catalog created and maintained by a web crawler called DappleSearch.  It looks for servers on the internet that publish spatial data such as WMS Servers and ArcIMS Servers. 

 

The OneGeology portal (recently reported by the BBC) is a collection of spatial data servers publishing 1:1,000,000 geology maps for the world. These datasets are just one of the data sources included in the DappleSearch results. 

 

If you like what you see, grab a GeoTIFF from Dapple, or use the link and go straight to the source.  You can also add WMS or ArcIMS to your own Server list.

 

 

Happy spatial data searching!

 

  

An Alternative Alteration Plot

Sometimes geologists cross paths with databases.  And you never know what you’re going to get when this happens – fireworks, explosions!?

As a geologist, my world includes plotting data in Target. For example, I may want to plot a strip log or section with some key alteration types – a plot for CPY, for PY and for SER.  But what if the data was logged in fields called Alt1, Alt2, Alt3, containing alteration codes like CPY, PY, and SER….? 

 

Likewise, Alt_Int needs to be CPY_Intensity when Alt1, Alt2 or Alt3 could be CPY.

It doesn’t take a database guru to convert results this way.  I can use the Math Expression tool to create these new fields, essentially ‘pivoting’ the data from Alt1 into fields for each type of alteration.

I can fill in the SER field with the alteration intensity using a simple expression: C0 = C1=="SER"?C2:""

 

Expand this to combine sericite alteration from all Alteration fields:
SER = Alt1=="SER"?Alt1_Int:(Alt2=="SER"?Alt2_Int:"") And voila!

 

Then, combining plotting options with Alteration Intensity or Percentage can make for some useful data visualization techniques – Go from a plot of Alt1 to a plot of alteration by intensity.

Sometimes geologists cross paths with databases.  And you never know what you’re going to get when this happens – fireworks, explosions!?

As a geologist, my world includes plotting data in Target. For example, I may want to plot a strip log or section with some key alteration types – a plot for CPY, for PY and for SER.  But what if the data was logged in fields called Alt1, Alt2, Alt3, containing alteration codes like CPY, PY, and SER….? 

 

Likewise, Alt_Int needs to be CPY_Intensity when Alt1, Alt2 or Alt3 could be CPY.

It doesn’t take a database guru to convert results this way.  I can use the Math Expression tool to create these new fields, essentially ‘pivoting’ the data from Alt1 into fields for each type of alteration.

I can fill in the SER field with the alteration intensity using a simple expression: C0 = C1=="SER"?C2:""

 

Expand this to combine sericite alteration from all Alteration fields:
SER = Alt1=="SER"?Alt1_Int:(Alt2=="SER"?Alt2_Int:"") And voila!

 

Then, combining plotting options with Alteration Intensity or Percentage can make for some useful data visualization techniques – Go from a plot of Alt1 to a plot of alteration by intensity.