Solving Geoscience questions using Julia:

Specific Domains Geo
1

Okay, so, I’m trying to become proficient at using Julia for various applications and not just cleaning and crunching datasets.

One of my graduate classes assigned a few problems that we can do by hand, but we are also encouraged to do them in a programming language of our choice if feasible.

Which brings me to my question (I’m not looking for solutions - rather guidance on how to get started and which packages would be useful for tackling the problems):

First question is:

Three ridges A, B, and C meet at a triple junction. Ridge ‘A’ has has a strike of 329-degrees (N31W) and a spreading rate of 7.0 cm yr^-1; ridge ‘B’ strikes at 233-degrees (S53W) and has a spreading rate of 5.0 cm yr^-1. Determine the strike of ridge ‘C’ and its spreading rate.

I know it would be easy to just draw out these lines on paper and trig it out by hand, but where is the fun in that?? I think it would be a good learning experience to see if I could at least create a diagram using Julia and annotate it that way.

Does anyone have any insight to how I might start diagramming this out in Julia or any of the Julia packages? I was looking into Meshes.jl or GeoStats.jl but I think that’s for more advanced usage.

Any input is appreciated!

  • Rob
1 Like
2

So you know that

Vab + Vbc + Vca = 0

Pick a package that plots vectors and

  • Draw vector Vab (known)
  • Draw vector Vbc (known) at the end of Vab

The vector starting at the end of Vbc above and ending at the start of Vab is your solution.

3

@GeodeticR I would start by picking the geometry types that approximate the ridges for your purposes. You can consider simple 2D Boxes and then use Scale and Rotate to place them in the right place.

At the end you can call \angle between points, vectors or rays to get the angle of interest.