Computational Methods in Geophysics (U01790)

? Credit Points : 10 ? SCQF Level : 9 ? Acronym : GEO-3-COM

The course includes three modules on computing skills - the UNIX operating system, FORTRAN95 programming language and the GMT graphics package.

UNIX. UNIX is a command line operating language, i.e. it consists of a series of instructions typed into a computer, rather than a 'point & click' system, and is commonly used in scientific computing. The module covers basic understanding and use of UNIX and UNIX scripts.

FORTRAN (FORmula TRANslation) is a popular scientific programming language. It allows processing, modelling and analysis of data, and numerical simulations. The course covers what a structured programming language is, construction of a FORTRAN program, types of variables, arrays, loops and related constructs, subroutines, functions, input and output, libraries and library functions; writing, checking and debugging, and running simple programmes.

COMPUTER GRAPHICS. This module provides a practical introduction to the Generic Mapping Tool (GMT) package, a data processing and plotting package. GMT was designed for Earth Science applications and is very widely used by academica, national and international agencies, and for publishing. It operates using command line instructions, mostly usefully combined and run using UNIX scripts.

The remainder of the course introduces GEOPHYSICAL INVERSE THEORY.

Entry Requirements

? Pre-requisites : Introduction to Geophysics, Mathematical Methods 4, Applicable Mathematics 4, Physics 2A: Forces, Fields & Potentials. Other students may be admitted at the discretion of the Course Organiser. Some additional reading may be specified for such students.

? Costs : None.

Subject Areas

Home subject area

Earth Science, (School of GeoSciences, Schedule N)

Delivery Information

? Normal year taken : 3rd year

? Delivery Period : Semester 1 (Blocks 1-2)

? Contact Teaching Time : 3 hour(s) per week for 11 weeks

First Class Information

Date	Start	End	Room	Area	Additional Information
26/09/2006	11:10	12:00	Room 6.6201, JCMB	KB

All of the following classes

Type	Day	Start	End	Area
Lecture	Tuesday	11:10	12:00	KB
Lecture	Friday	10:00	10:50	KB
Lecture	Friday	12:10	13:00	KB

? Additional Class Information : Tue 1110 - 1200 (wks 1-11)
Fri 1210-1300 (wks 1-3); Fri 1000-1050 (wks 4-11)

Summary of Intended Learning Outcomes

From the course, you should:

* Understand the concept of a command line operating system;
* Be able to construct and use simple UNIX scripts, and understand the use of the FORTAN language, including concepts such as arrays, loops, subroutines and functions.
* Understand the concepts of map projections, and recognise and use some of the most common ones;
* Be able to plot a simple x-y graph, as well as plot irregularly distributed 2-D daa, including interpolating irregular 2-D data onto a regular grid, and display gridded data as a colour-tone image or as line contours.

From the Geophysical Inverse Theory module, should be able to:

* Understand the distinction between forward and inverse problems, linear and non-linear problems, and the relationship between data and model paramaters
* Formulate and solve least square problems
* Know how and why to weight data by their uncertainities, and understand how these uncertainities translate into uncertainities in model parameters
* Understand why damping is often a good strategy, know how to do a damped inversion, and be able to explain the effect of damping in terms of eigenvectors and eigenvalues
* Know how to treat non-linear problems.