EarthByte endeavours to make a variety of geological and geophysical data sets available to the community with every publication and project collaboration.
Where possible, all our data sets are able to be visualised using GPlates. Furthermore, every GPlates release is accompanied by a sample data bundle which includes published reconstruct-able raster and vector data.
Our data sets are available below, and are attached to their publication or news item. When using these data please cite the relevant publication.
| Software and Workflows |
|---|
| Badlands |
| Bayeslands |
| GPlates |
| pyGPlates |
| Underworld |
| PyBacktrack |
On the 30th of October 2024 GPlates Software Development had its 21st birthday. The first public version of GPlates was released exactly 21 years ago, with development led by the legendary James Boyden, who had teamed up with the no less legendary Hamish Ivey-Law who unfortunately could not join us at the Opera Bar for … Read more…
rgplates has joined the GPlates family! rgplates allows the integration of tectonic calculations into the R software environment for statistical computing and graphics. Paleogeographic reconstructions in GPlates can be directly connected to a vast number of statistical libraries available in R, which is also the primary scripting language of the paleobiology community. The figure below … Read more…
GPlates 2.5 released Download GPlates 2.5:- Download GPlates 2.5 and compatible geodata from the Download page. What’s new in GPlates 2.5:- This release finally has subduction zone teeth (pointing to the overriding plate)! Subduction zone teeth in 3D globe and 2D map views. Topological boundaries coloured by individual boundary line segments. Instead of each boundary polygon … Read more…
GPlates is a free desktop software for the interactive visualisation of plate-tectonics. The compilation and documentation of GPlates 2.5 data was primarily funded by AuScope National Collaborative Research Infrastructure (NCRIS).
GPlates is developed by the EarthByte Group (part of AuScope NCRIS) at the University of Sydney and the Division of Geological and Planetary Sciences (GPS) at California Institute of Technology (CalTech). … Read more…
Welcome to the download page for GPlates 2.5. Information about this release may be found on the News page of the GPlates website. This page contains the following sections: Download file descriptions There are 10 download files consisting of: GPlates binary installers The binary installers include GPlates and the GPlates-compatible geodata. For Windows: For macOS … Read more…
Earth’s topography and bathymetry with revised boundaries between continental and ocean crust overlain as thin red lines. We have released a refined data set of the boundaries between continental and ocean crust (COBs). The data can be downloaded from zenodo as GPlates-compatible gpmlz and as ESRI shapefile. The COBs are based on the data set … Read more…
We end 2023 with the release of GPlately1.3, with a number of bugfixes and improvements. The cool functionality of GPlately includes generating gridded oceanic crustal ages and seafloor spreading rates from plate models with evolving plate boundaries – see example below using a plate model in a mantle reference frame. Happy holidays from the EarthByte … Read more…
GPlates 2.4 released A note about GPlates 2.4:- This release contains mostly bug fixes (compared to GPlates 2.3). We’ve also added some Scientific Colour Maps by Fabio Crameri to our builtin colour palettes. However, most new functionality is still in development and will go into the GPlates 3.0 release (late 2024). This is because it depends on the graphics … Read more…
GPlates is a free desktop software for the interactive visualisation of plate-tectonics. The compilation and documentation of GPlates 2.4 data was primarily funded by AuScope National Collaborative Research Infrastructure (NCRIS).
GPlates is developed by the EarthByte Group (part of AuScope NCRIS) at the University of Sydney and the Division of Geological and Planetary Sciences (GPS) at California Institute of Technology (CalTech). … Read more…
Low‐temperature thermochronology is a powerful tool for constraining the thermal evolution of rocks and minerals in relation to a breadth of tectonic, geodynamic, landscape evolution, and natural resource formation processes through deep time. However, complexities inherent to these analytical techniques can make interpreting the significance of results challenging, requiring them to be placed in their … Read more…
PyGPlates is an open-source Python library to visualize and edit plate tectonic reconstructions created using GPlates. The Python API affords a greater level of flexibility than GPlates to interrogate plate reconstructions and integrate with other Python workflows. GPlately was created to accelerate spatio-temporal data analysis leveraging pyGPlates and PlateTectonicTools within a simplified Python interface. This … Read more…
We have just released GPlately1.0 as a conda package. GPlately was created to accelerate spatio-temporal data analysis leveraging pyGPlates and PlateTectonicTools within a simplified Python interface. GPlately is a python package that enables the reconstruction of data through deep geologic time (points, lines, polygons and rasters), the interrogation of plate kinematic information (plate velocities, rates of subduction … Read more…
Travel through geological time to find copper deposits via our article in the inaugural issue of the Future Mining Magazine. https://future-mining.partica.online/future-mining/vol-1-no-1/flipbook/60/ Plate reconstructions at 1000, 400, 300, 200, 100 million years ago and at present-day. Ancient ocean basins are shown in white with continents in grey, and coloured arrows showing plate speed and direction. Mid-ocean … Read more…
Understanding the long-term evolution of Earth’s plate-mantle system is reliant on absolute plate motion models in a mantle reference frame, but such models are both difficult to construct and controversial. We present a tectonic rules-based optimisation approach to construct a plate motion model in a mantle reference frame covering the last billion years and use … Read more…
PyBacktrack 1.4 is now available, and adds support for generating paleobathymetry grids from submerged present-day crust. PyBacktrack is available as a Python package and a Docker image. Installation instructions can be found online in the pyBacktrack documentation. Changes since version 1.3: Can now generate paleobathymetry grids: Submerged oceanic and continental present-day crust is backtracked and … Read more…
Recent progress in plate tectonic reconstructions has seen models move beyond the classical idea of continental drift by attempting to reconstruct the full evolving configuration of tectonic plates and plate boundaries. A particular problem for the Neoproterozoic and Cambrian is that many existing interpretations of geological and palaeomagnetic data have remained disconnected from younger, better-constrained … Read more…
ASEG will be hosting their next technical meeting on Wednesday 20th April, featuring EarthByter Ehsan Farahbakhsh Title: The use of machine learning in processing remote sensing data for mineral exploration Time: 5:30 pm for 6:00 pm start Address: Level 2, 99 on York (99 York St, Sydney. Room ‘York 2’) For virtual attendance, … Read more…
When floodwaters recede, where do they go? By Loren Smith University of Sydney researchers have modelled water-storing aquifers that perform a natural balancing act: they absorb water during floods and supply water during drought. Yet human intervention is limiting their function. University of Sydney researchers have identified a groundwater ‘superhighway’ along Australia’s east coast. Stretching from … Read more…
Retrograde clay mineral reactions (reverse weathering), including glauconite formation, are first-order controls on element sequestration in marine sediments. Here, we report substantial element sequestration by glauconite formation in shallow marine settings from the Triassic to the Holocene, averaging 3 ± 2 mmol·cm−²·kyr−1 for K, Mg and Al, 16 ± 9 mmol·cm−²·kyr−1 for Si and 6 ± 3 mmol·cm−²·kyr−1 for Fe, which is ~2 orders of magnitude higher … Read more…
The deep-sea stratigraphic record is full of gaps. These hiatuses track changes in ocean circulation and chemistry, but determining their timing and causes has been limited by sparse data and incomplete knowledge of ocean gateway evolution in earlier studies. We combine a significantly expanded, age-calibrated deep-sea stratigraphic database with a global tectonic and paleo–water depth … Read more…
Numerical models of groundwater flow play a critical role for water management scenarios under climate extremes. Large‐scale models play a key role in determining long-range flow pathways from continental interiors to the oceans, yet struggle to simulate the local flow patterns offered by small‐scale models. We have developed a highly scalable numerical framework to model … Read more…
Sundaland, the inundated shelf separating Java, Sumatra and Borneo from the Malay Peninsula, is of exceptional interest to biogeographers for its species richness and its position at the junction between the Australasian and Indomalay biogeographic provinces. Owing to its low elevation and relief, its physiography is contingent on relative sea-level change, which drove Quaternary species … Read more…
Continental sedimentation was widespread across the Central Anatolian Plateau in Miocene– Pliocene time, during the early stages of plateau uplift. Today, however, most sediment produced on the plateau is dispersed by a well-integrated drainage and released into surrounding marine depocenters. Residual long-term (106–107 yr) sediment storage on the plateau is now restricted to a few … Read more…
How continental lithosphere responds to extension is a function of the dynamic interaction between layers of differing rheological properties, including the shallow crust, deep crust, lithospheric mantle, and asthenosphere. We investigate the first-order controls on the modes of extension and timing of transition from continental rifting to development of continental margins via a suite of … Read more…
Widespread flooding of the Australian continent during the Early Cretaceous, referred to as the Eromanga Sea, deposited extensive shallow marine sediments throughout the Great Artesian Basin (GAB). This event had been considered ‘out of sync’ with eustatic sea level and was instead solely attributed to dynamic subsidence associated with Australia’s passage over eastern Gondwanan subducted … Read more…
GPlates 2.3 is released! It enables computation of tectonic syn- and post-rift subsidence for basins/margins, supports Retina displays, can export GeoJSON files and comes with many bugfixes. Download GPlates2.3
Luana Schena from the University of Zurich has just completed her summer internship in the EarthByte group, albeit remotely. Luana was working on a database of seafloor ages from DSDP/ODP/IODP drill holes from published data and focused on the world’s back-arc basins. This database will become a great complement to our present day seafloor age … Read more…
GPlates is a free desktop software for the interactive visualisation of plate-tectonics. The compilation and documentation of GPlates 2.3 data was primarily funded by AuScope National Collaborative Research Infrastructure (NCRIS).
GPlates is developed by the EarthByte Group (part of AuScope NCRIS) at the University of Sydney and the Division of Geological and Planetary Sciences (GPS) at California Institute of Technology (CalTech). … Read more…
THE RISE AND DEMISE OF EARTH’S GIANT REEF SYSTEMS Expression of Interest This PhD scholarship is only available to Australian domestic applicants. Submit your expression of interest for this PhD scholarship opportunity to Dr Sabin Zahirovic via email (sabin.zahirovic@sydney.edu.au) by 30 June 2021 (with the subject line “DECRA-PHD-2021”). In your expression of interest, include … Read more…
In Eastern Asia, Jurassic and Cretaceous intraplate volcanism and magmatism differ in their spatial distribution and composition. A combination of plate kinematic and geodynamic models provides clues for their causes.
