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3.2 Gridding of arbitrarily spaced data

Except in the situation above when a gridded file is available, we must convert our data to the right format readable by GMT before we can make contour plots and color-coded images. We distinguish between two scenarios:

  1. The (x, y, z) data are available on a regular lattice grid.

  2. The (x, y, z) data are distributed unevenly in the plane.

The former situation may require a simple reformatting (using xyz2grd), while the latter must be interpolated onto a regular lattice; this process is known as gridding. GMT supports three different approaches to gridding; here, we will briefly discuss the two most common techniques.

All GMT gridding programs have in common the requirement that the user must specify the grid domain and output filename:

-Rxmin/xmax/ymin/ymax The desired grid extent
-Ixinc[m$\vert$c][/yinc[m$\vert$c]] The grid spacing (append m or c for minutes or seconds of arc)
-Ggridfile The output grid filename



Subsections
next up previous contents index
Next: 3.2.1 Nearest neighbor gridding Up: 3. SESSION THREE Previous: 3.1.1 Exercises   Contents   Index
Paul Wessel 2006-05-31