Plotting for Beginners Part One, aaaaand Another Look at Malcolm.

(Enmedio WMV preview)

It’s good to share the work, so here’s some tips on making your own plots with the tools that came packaged with your Windows PC.
For me, “getting into the data” has really helped to refine my understanding and “mental model” of the subject.

There are deliberately no pictures, because the idea is that you follow the links and have a go yourself… If not, I think the examples are worth a look anyway x

We’ll use the Canary Islands to illustrate because I know my way around the dataset…As well as some of the awesome hiking routes. See the picture at the top of: https://volcanocafe.wordpress.com/2012/06/03/edge-driven-convection-bobs-back-story-and-malcolm-in-the-middle/

Thankfully you can get a beer at the end, which; if you walk that route, you will have earned. (Even though in the Topoguidebook it looks “mostly” downhill, and actually is…)

Internet Explorer (or another browser) and “screenprints” are the most useful tools a budding plotter has:

Have the Paint program open, but minimised or “behind” the screen you want to print, align (you get a “print” of exactly what is on your screen,) press the Print Screen key (you may need to use Ctrl or Fn as well, depending on your keyboard), bring up Paint, then press Ctrl +V to drop it in, Save As a PNG or JPEG file. (I’m still not sure which is best…)

Most of you will be familiar with the IGN Hierro page; so try this, go to: http://www.ign.es/ign/resources/volcanologia/HIERRO.html

Select Forma de Onda, Espectrogram and which Estacion (for example, EOSO: Gran Canaria), move this new window to one side of your screen.

On the original page, once again select Forma de Onda, Espectrogram, then select; another Estacion, remembering that they’re calibrated differently, or Anterior, for the previous day.
“Manually” align your two windows, take a screenshot aaaaand Voila!!!!
You have an (almost) instant plot, something like this:

This is a primitive/ limited method, but it does give us an idea of what seismologists do. This example shows the same event; automatic solution: (20/6/12, 15:00, 28.276, -15.457, no depth, 1.5) on the CCAN (Left; Tenerife) and the EOSO (Right; Gran Canaria) Espectrograms. Professional seismologists don’t tend to use the schpectrogram so much; it’s actually just the seismogram signal with a Fourier transformation applied…but it will do for us amateur beginners!

n.b. This event has been reviewed and removed from the catalogue since I wrote this…Annnd that’s kinda the point x

For slightly less instant graphification go to:
http://www.avcan.org/?m=Mapas

Choose Crear Mapa; ask yourself, “What do I want to know?” Then enter yr parameters, it’s a wee bit fiddly, but I’m not gonna hold yr hand, you might as well get used to faffing about…x

Talking of faffing; there are various interfaces on the Avcan site, my tips work for the specified link, (bear in mind that I’m running a clunkputer.) AVCANmapas is GoogleEarth based and IMHO not as useful, Animacion crashes the clunkputer every time…These may well be worth a try if you’re using a more up to date system.

So, given half an hour/minute or two, you may well have come up with something like this: http://www.avcan.org/modules.php?name=Sismos&file=mapas&mapa=3425

Avcan are really very helpful; they save yr maps in their server, so you can repeat the process and overlay on yr previous maps…

Go to the Crear Mapa page, choose Tus Mapas, select a map, then enter a new set of parameters… Repeat; “layer it up”:
http://www.avcan.org/modules.php?name=Sismos&file=mapas&mapa=3483

This shows earthquakes of all magnitudes: 1970 to the end of the “Enmedio quake swarm” of 1989, 1990 to the end of the “Teide seismic crisis” of 2004, and 2005 to the present day(ish.) At the bottom of the page is a legend, thanks Avcan x.

Disclaimer: please remember the “technical skew”; seismic networks and instruments are improving all the time, just because there have been more recorded quakes in recent years doesn’t mean that there’s any particular cause for concern, many of them will have been “tiddlers”; previously undetectable.

Unfortunately, the overlays hide the detail of your base map… One simple way around this is to use Windows Movie Maker to fade your layers in/out.

More about that next time…

Schteve x

Wiv big fanx to Lizzie (my beautiful sweet love) for test-driving and all round editorialness x

P.S. If you come up with something you are happy to share; save it somewhere convenient; like yr desktop, go to:
http://tinypic.com/index.php

and follow the instructions, copy the “direct link for layouts” and paste into a comment on Volcanocafe.

Please provide an explication in your comment; random plots are even more annoying than random links.

Update: Schteve wanted a youtube link which i missed out on.

Spica