Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
1 Data Analysis in Earth
Sciences
Taking measurements with a dif erential
GPS unit in the Suguta Valley of northern
Kenya. This device allows locations to be very
accurately determined. The locations and
altitudes of paleo-strandlines in the Suguta
Valley were measured in order to reconstruct
water-level l uctuations in the area over the
last 15,000 years.
1.1 Introduction
Earth scientists make observations and gather data about the natural
processes that operate on planet Earth. h ey formulate and test hypotheses
on the forces that have acted on a particular region to create its structure and
also make predictions about future changes to the planet. All of these steps
in exploring the Earth involve the acquisition and analysis of numerical data.
An earth scientist therefore needs to have a i rm understanding of statistical
and numerical methods as well as the ability to utilize relevant computer
sot ware packages, in order to be able to analyze the acquired data.
h is topic introduces some of the most important methods of data analysis
employed in earth sciences and illustrates their use through examples using
the MATLAB® sot ware package. h ese examples can then be used as recipes
for the analysis of the reader's own data, at er having learned their application
with synthetic data. h is introductory chapter deals with data acquisition
(Section 1.2), the various types of data (Section 1.3) and the appropriate
methods for analyzing earth science data (Section 1.4). We therefore i rst
explore the characteristics of typical data sets and subsequently investigate
the various ways of analyzing data using MATLAB.
