GPlates is

open-source Open source is source code that is made freely available for possible modification and redistribution. Products include permission to use and view the source code, design documents, or content of the product. The open source model is a decentrali ...

application software Application software is any computer program that is intended for end-user use not operating, administering or programming the computer. An application (app, application program, software application) is any program that can be categorized as ...

offering a novel combination of interactive plate-tectonic reconstructions,

geographic information system A geographic information system (GIS) consists of integrated computer hardware and Geographic information system software, software that store, manage, Spatial analysis, analyze, edit, output, and Cartographic design, visualize Geographic data ...

(GIS) functionality and raster data visualisation. The GPlates software platform comprises the GPlates desktop software, command line tools, GPlates Python library (pyGPlates), GPlates web service and web application, a high-level Python encapsulation package GPlately, a plate tectonic toolkit PlateTectonicTools and a data server which serves plate reconstruction model datasets from the cloud. GPlates also supports integration with

GeoServer In computing, GeoServer is an open-source server written in Java that allows users to share, process and edit geospatial data. Designed for interoperability, it publishes data from any major spatial data source using open standards. GeoServer h ...

and

PostGIS PostGIS ( ) is an open source software program that adds support for geographic objects to the PostgreSQL object-relational database. PostGIS follows the Simple Features for SQL specification from the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC). PostGIS is ...

databases. By incorporating this technology stack, GPlates simplifies and streamlines data processing, integration, analysis, and visualisation to ease the workload for geoscientists. The software can be used to create new plate reconstruction models or optimize existing models.

History

GPlates was conceived in 2002 by the following committee: *

Dietmar Müller Dietmar Müller is a professor of geophysics at the school of geosciences, the University of Sydney. Early life and education Müller received his undergraduate degree from the Christian-Albrechts University of Kiel in Germany, followed by ...

ommittee chair(University of Sydney) * Stuart Clark (University of Sydney) * Mike Coffin (ORI/IFREE) * Mike Gurnis (Caltech) * Lawrence Lawver (PLATES/UTIG) * Louis Moresi (Monash University/VPAC) * Tim Redfield (PGP/NGU) * Walter Roest (GSC) * Trond Torsvik (PGP/NGU) The first GPlates prototype ("GPlates 0.5") was released on 30 October, 2003. The first stable version GPlates 1.0.0 was released in 2010. The latest release is GPlates 2.3 and was released in September 2021. In 2012, the GPlates team won the NeCTAR/ANDS #nadojo competition. And in the same year, the GPlates team started the development of GPlates Portal and Web Service. In 2014, the GPlates Web Portal and Web Service were launched. In 2016, the first public version of pyGPlates was released. The pyGPlates beta revision 28 was released on 8 August 2020. This is the first version which supports Python3. The latest pyGPlates release is 0.36 and was released in May 2022. In 2022, the first version GPlately was released. The latest GPlately release is 1.0.0 and was released in April 2023. After keeping source code on

Apache Subversion Apache Subversion (often abbreviated SVN, after its command name ''svn'') is a version control system distributed as open source under the Apache License. Software developers use Subversion to maintain current and historical versions of files su ...

and

SourceForge SourceForge is a web service founded by Geoffrey B. Jeffery, Tim Perdue, and Drew Streib in November 1999. SourceForge provides a centralized software discovery platform, including an online platform for managing and hosting open-source soft ...

for nearly 20 years, the GPlates source code was moved to

GitHub GitHub () is a Proprietary software, proprietary developer platform that allows developers to create, store, manage, and share their code. It uses Git to provide distributed version control and GitHub itself provides access control, bug trackin ...

on 1 August, 2023.

Functionality

GPlates enables both the visualization and the manipulation of plate-tectonic reconstructions and associated data through geological time: * Load and save geological, geographic and tectonic feature data. * Assign feature data to tectonic plates. * Reconstruct feature data to past geological times. * Query and edit feature properties and geometries. * Modify reconstructions graphically. * Visualize vector and raster data on the globe or in one of the map projections. * Visualize sub-surface 3D scalar fields as isosurfaces or 2D cross-sections. * Export reconstructed data as a time-sequence of exported files. * Use plate polygons (with dynamic boundaries and deformation) to calculate velocity fields.

Contributors

GPlates is developed by an international team of scientists and professional software developers at: * the EarthByte group in the school of Geosciences at the

University of Sydney The University of Sydney (USYD) is a public university, public research university in Sydney, Australia. Founded in 1850, it is the oldest university in both Australia and Oceania. One of Australia's six sandstone universities, it was one of the ...

with past contributions from: * the Division of Geological and Planetary Sciences (GPS) at

Caltech The California Institute of Technology (branded as Caltech) is a private university, private research university in Pasadena, California, United States. The university is responsible for many modern scientific advancements and is among a small g ...

* the Centre for Earth Evolution and Dynamics (CEED) at the Department of Geosciences,

University of Oslo The University of Oslo (; ) is a public university, public research university located in Oslo, Norway. It is the List of oldest universities in continuous operation#Europe, oldest university in Norway. Originally named the Royal Frederick Univ ...

, Norway * the Geodynamics Team at the Geological Survey of Norway (NGU)

Adoption

GPlates is used by geophysicists, students and researchers in academic institutions, government departments and industry. It has also gained currency in the creative

worldbuilding Worldbuilding is the process of constructing an imaginary world or setting (narrative), setting, sometimes associated with a fictional universe. Developing the world with coherent qualities such as a history, geography, culture and ecology is a k ...

community as a tool for maintaining realism or

verisimilitude In philosophy, verisimilitude (or truthlikeness) is the notion that some propositions are closer to being true than other propositions. The problem of verisimilitude is the problem of articulating what it takes for one false theory to be close ...

in geographic features. In 2019, two Australian researchers used the software to create a tectonic map of the continents within the fictional ''

Game of Thrones ''Game of Thrones'' is an American Fantasy television, fantasy Drama (film and television), drama television series created by David Benioff and for HBO. It is an adaptation of ''A Song of Ice and Fire'', a series of high fantasy novels by ...

'' universe.

Implementation

GPlates runs on

Mac OS X macOS, previously OS X and originally Mac OS X, is a Unix, Unix-based operating system developed and marketed by Apple Inc., Apple since 2001. It is the current operating system for Apple's Mac (computer), Mac computers. With ...

Microsoft Windows Windows is a Product lining, product line of Proprietary software, proprietary graphical user interface, graphical operating systems developed and marketed by Microsoft. It is grouped into families and subfamilies that cater to particular sec ...

and

Linux Linux ( ) is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an kernel (operating system), operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically package manager, pac ...

. GPlates is written in C++ and uses

OpenGL OpenGL (Open Graphics Library) is a Language-independent specification, cross-language, cross-platform application programming interface (API) for rendering 2D computer graphics, 2D and 3D computer graphics, 3D vector graphics. The API is typic ...

to render its 3D globe and 2D

map A map is a symbolic depiction of interrelationships, commonly spatial, between things within a space. A map may be annotated with text and graphics. Like any graphic, a map may be fixed to paper or other durable media, or may be displayed on ...

views. It uses Qt as a GUI framework. The Boost C++ library has also been widely used. Other libraries include

GDAL The Geospatial Data Abstraction Library (GDAL) is a computer software library for reading and writing raster and vector geospatial data formats (e.g. shapefile), and is released under the permissive X/MIT style free software license by the ...

, CGAL, proj, qwt and GLEW. GPlates uses the GPlates Geological Information Model (GPGIM) to represent geological data in a

Plate tectonics Plate tectonics (, ) is the scientific theory that the Earth's lithosphere comprises a number of large tectonic plates, which have been slowly moving since 3–4 billion years ago. The model builds on the concept of , an idea developed durin ...

context. Th
GPlates Markup Language
(GPML) is an XML implementation of the GPGIM derived from the

Geography Markup Language The Geography Markup Language (GML) is the XML grammar defined by the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) to express geographical features. GML serves as a modeling language for geographic systems as well as an open interchange format for geographic ...

(GML).

People

Developers

*John Cannon (active) EarthByte group, The University of Sydney : John joined the GPlates development team in 2009. He is the current lead developer of GPlates. *Michael Chin(Xiaodong Qin) (active) EarthByte group, The University of Sydney : Michael joined the GPlates development team in 2010. He is the

architect An architect is a person who plans, designs, and oversees the construction of buildings. To practice architecture means to provide services in connection with the design of buildings and the space within the site surrounding the buildings that h ...

of GPlates Portal and

Web service A web service (WS) is either: * a service offered by an electronic device to another electronic device, communicating with each other via the Internet, or * a server running on a computer device, listening for requests at a particular port over a n ...

. He is also the development lead of GPlates

mobile App A mobile application or app is a computer program or software application designed to run on a mobile device such as a smartphone, phone, tablet computer, tablet, or smartwatch, watch. Mobile applications often stand in contrast to desktop appli ...

. *Robin Watson (inactive) Geodynamics team, Geological Survey of Norway *Mark Turner (inactive) *Enoch Lau (inactive) *James Clark (inactive) *James Boyden (inactive) *Hamish Ivey-Law (inactive)

Scientists

*Professor

:Dietmar is the founder and current lead of the GPlates project. *Professor Mike Gurnis :Mike Gurnis is a co-founder of the GPlates project. *Associate Professor Maria Seton *Sabin Zahirovic *Ben Mather *Simon Williams

Licensing

GPlates is released under GNU General Public License version 2.0 (GPLv2) and the source code can be found on

GPlates Python Binding

The GPlates Python library (pyGPlates) enables access to GPlates functionality via the Python programming language. It allows users to use GPlates in a programmatic way and aims to provide more flexibility than the GPlates desktop interface can offer. The pyGPlates is available on Conda (conda-forge channel). The latest pyGPlates release is 0.36 which was released on 06 May, 2022.

GPlates Web Service

The GPlates

Web Service A web service (WS) is either: * a service offered by an electronic device to another electronic device, communicating with each other via the Internet, or * a server running on a computer device, listening for requests at a particular port over a n ...

was built upon pygplates. It allows users to access the GPlates functionalities via

Internet The Internet (or internet) is the Global network, global system of interconnected computer networks that uses the Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP) to communicate between networks and devices. It is a internetworking, network of networks ...

. The GPlates Web Service has been containerized. Users can deploy the Docker container locally to enhance performance and data security.

GPlately

The GPlately Python library is a high-level encapsulation of pygplates and PlateTectonicTools. It was created to accelerate the spatio-temporal data analysis. GPlately is available on PyPI and Conda (conda-forge channel). The latest GPlately release is 1.3.0 which was released on 22 December, 2023.

GPlates Portal

The GPlates Web Portal is a gateway to a series of GPlates-based web applications. Initially the portal was hosted on Nectar Cloud. Later on, it was migrated to

Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) is a part of Amazon's cloud-computing platform, Amazon Web Services (AWS), that allows users to rent virtual computers on which to run their own computer applications. EC2 encourages scalable deployment of ap ...

. Below is a list of applications in GPlates Web Portal. *Vertical Gravity Gradient :3D visualization of the Vertical Gravity Gradient Grid. *Raster Reconstruction :Reconstruct raster images through time. *Paleomap Maker :Data reconstruction and visualization service. *Dynamic Topography *IPython Sandbox :Demonstrate how to use pyGPlates in

IPython IPython (Interactive Python) is a command shell for interactive computing in multiple programming languages, originally developed for the Python programming language, that offers introspection, rich media, shell syntax, tab completion, and his ...

Notebook. *Magnetic Picks *SRTM15_PLUS Topography *Seafloor Lithology The Cesium

JavaScript JavaScript (), often abbreviated as JS, is a programming language and core technology of the World Wide Web, alongside HTML and CSS. Ninety-nine percent of websites use JavaScript on the client side for webpage behavior. Web browsers have ...

library is used to render the 3D globe in a web browser.

GPlates Data

The "SampleData" was made available along with very software releases. Since GPlates release 2.2 the "SampleData" underwent rebranding and is now known as "GeoData". More GPlates-compatible data can be found o
Research Data Australia
which is the data discovery service of the Australian Research Data Commons (ARDC).

Media

*CNN (This map lets you see where your hometown was on the Earth millions of years ago) *The Guardian (The most detailed map of the ocean floor ever seen) *wired.com (Super-Detailed Interactive 3-D Seafloor Map) *Industry Advocate (Seafloor Mapping first) *Orma (Earth Without Oceans Stunning New Interactive Map of the Earth's Seafloor)

Awards

GPlates was shortlisted for the Australian Research Data Commons Eureka Prize for Excellence in Research Software in 2023.

Select publications

Below is a list of select publications of GPlates. *Plate tectonic raster reconstruction in GPlates *Next-generation plate-tectonic reconstructions using GPlates *The GPlates Geological Information Model and Markup Language *An open-source software environment for visualizing and refining plate tectonic reconstructions using high-resolution geological and geophysical data sets *Plate Reconstructions with Continuously Closing Plates *Visualizing 3D mantle structure from seismic tomography and geodynamic model predictions of the India-Eurasia and East Asia convergence zone *Application of open-source software and high-resolution geophysical images to explore the plate tectonic evolution of Australia *A Custom Implementation for Visualizing Sub-surface 3D Scalar Fields in GPlates *The GPlates Portal: Cloud-based interactive 3D visualization of global geophysical and geological data in a web browser

Funding

Australian Laureate FellowshipAuScopeScience and Industry Endowment Fund (SIEF)
* Australian Research Council

References

External links

* {{Official website Cross-platform free software Qt (software) OpenGL Plate tectonics