3D tomography model that is given as a netCDF file

Goal

This explains how to load a 3D seismic data set that is given in netCDF format, and plot it in paraview. The example is a shear-wave velocity model of the Alpine-Mediterranean region, described in:

El-Sharkawy et al. (2020), The Slab Puzzle of the Alpine‐Mediterranean Region: Insights from a new, High‐Resolution, Shear‐Wave Velocity Model of the Upper Mantle, G$^3$ https://doi.org/10.1029/2020GC008993

Steps

1. Download data

The data is can be downloaded from https://ds.iris.edu/files/products/emc/emc-files/El-Sharkawy-etal-G3.2020-MeRE2020-Mediterranean-0.0.nc. Do that and start julia from the directory where it was downloaded.

2. Read data into Julia

The main data-file, El-Sharkawy-etal-G3.2020-MeRE2020-Mediterranean-0.0.nc, is given as netCDF file. To read in data of this type, it is necessary to load an appropriate package. Here, we will use the https://github.com/JuliaGeo/NetCDF.jl package. Download and install the package with:

julia> using Pkg
julia> Pkg.add("NetCDF")

First, let us have a look at the contents of this file (assuming that you are in the same directory where the file is located):

julia> using NetCDF
julia> filename = ("El-Sharkawy-etal-G3.2020-MeRE2020-Mediterranean-0.0.nc")
julia> ncinfo("El-Sharkawy-etal-G3.2020-MeRE2020-Mediterranean-0.0.nc")
##### NetCDF File #####

/Users/mthiel/PROJECTS/CURRENT/SPP2017/GeophysicalModelGenerator/InputData/El-Sharkawy/El-Sharkawy-etal-G3.2020-MeRE2020-Mediterranean-0.0.nc

##### Dimensions #####

Name                                                                            Length
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
depth                                                                           301
latitude                                                                        100
longitude                                                                       100

##### Variables #####

Name                                            Type                    Dimensions
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
depth                                           FLOAT                   depth
latitude                                        FLOAT                   latitude
longitude                                       FLOAT                   longitude
Vs                                              FLOAT                   longitude latitude depth

##### Attributes #####

Variable                      Name                          Value
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
global                        author_email                  amr.elsharkawy@ifg.uni-kiel.de
global                        data_revision                 r.0.0
global                        author_institution            Institute of Geosciences, University of Kiel, Otto-Hahn Pl..
global                        keywords                      seismic tomography, shear wave, Mediterranean, phase veloc..
global                        acknowledgment                Model was provided by Dr. El-Sharkawy, Institute of Geosci..
global                        history                       2020-09-29 14:37:43 UTC Converted to netCDF by GeoCSV_2_ne..
global                        repository_pid                doi:10.17611/dp/emc.2020.meresvelsh.1
global                        id                            MeRE2020
global                        author_name                   Amr EL-Sharkawy
global                        comment                       model converted to netCDF by IRIS EMC
global                        NCO                           netCDF Operators version 4.7.5 (Homepage = http://nco.sf.n..
global                        summary                       MeRE2020 is a high-resolution Shear‐wave velocity mod..
global                        repository_institution        IRIS DMC
global                        netCDF_file                   El-Sharkawy-etal-G3.2020-MeRE2020-Mediterranean-1.0.nc
global                        author_url                    https://www.seismologie.ifg.uni-kiel.de
global                        reference                     El-Sharkawy, et al. (2020)
global                        repository_name               EMC
global                        Conventions                   CF-1.0
global                        Metadata_Conventions          Unidata Dataset Discovery v1.0
global                        title                         The Slab Puzzle of the Alpine‐Mediterranean Region: I..
depth                         units                         km
depth                         long_name                     depth in km
depth                         display_name                  depth in km
depth                         positive                      down
latitude                      units                         degrees_north
latitude                      long_name                     Latitude; positive north
latitude                      standard_name                 latitude
longitude                     units                         degrees_east
longitude                     long_name                     Longitude; positive east
longitude                     standard_name                 longitude
Vs                            units                         km.s-1
Vs                            long_name                     Shear wave velocity
Vs                            display_name                  S Velocity (km/s)

As you can see, there is quite some information present in this file. The most important information here are the different variables stored in this file:

##### Variables #####

Name                                            Type                    Dimensions
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
depth                                           FLOAT                   depth
latitude                                        FLOAT                   latitude
longitude                                       FLOAT                   longitude
Vs                                              FLOAT                   longitude latitude depth

Here we can see that there are four variables in this file, three of them (depth,latitude, longitude) having a single dimension and the fourth one (Vs) having dimensions of the three previous variables. The three one-dimensional vectors therefore denote a regular grid of coordinates defining the locations where Vs is stored. To load this data, we can now simply use the command ncread:

julia> lat = ncread(filename,"latitude")
julia> lon = ncread(filename,"longitude")
julia> depth = ncread(filename,"depth")
julia> Vs_3D = ncread(filename,"Vs")
julia> depth = -1 .* depth

Note that we multiplied depth with -1. This is necessary to make depth to be negative, as that is what GeophysicalModelGenerator.jl expects.

3. Reformat the coordinate data

In the netCDF file, coordinates are given as 1D vectors denoting the location of nodes in a regular grid. However, GeophysicalModelGenerator.jl expects true 3D data, where each data point is assigned a latitude,longitude, depth and the respective property (here: Vs). To generate this full regular 3D grid, do the following:

julia> using GeophysicalModelGenerator
Lon3D,Lat3D,Depth3D = lonlatdepth_grid(lon, lat, depth);

4. Generate Paraview file

Once the 3D coordinate matrix has been generated, producing a Paraview file is done with the following command

julia> Data_set = GeoData(Lon3D,Lat3D,Depth3D,(Vs_km_s=Vs_3D,))
GeoData
  size  : (100, 100, 301)
  lon   ϵ [ 29.0 - 51.0]
  lat   ϵ [ -11.0 - 45.9900016784668]
  depth ϵ [ -350.0 km - -50.0 km]
  fields: (:Vs_km_s,)
julia> write_paraview(Data_set, "MeRe_ElSharkawy")
1-element Vector{String}:
 "MeRe_ElSharkawy.vts"

5. Plotting data in Paraview

In paraview you can open the file and visualize it:

DataPoints_Paraview

Note that we employ the perceptually uniform color map Barlow, which you can download here.

If you want to clip the data set @ 200 km depth, you need to select the Clip tool, select Sphere as a clip type, set the center to [0,0,0] and set the radius to 6171 (=radius earth - 200 km).

Tutorial_ElSharkawy_MeRe_DataPoints_Paraview_2

6. Julia script

The full julia script that does it all is given here. You need to be in the same directory as in the data file, after which you can run it in julia with

julia> include("MeRe_ElSharkawy.jl")