Hello all,
I have water temperature data from several depths in a lake and would like to plot them as isobathytherms, that is to say a contour plots for temperature with the water depth as the y-axis and the time on the x-axis. This kind of plots can be seen in many publications but strangely the authors never mention what software they used to draw their figure.
Some people have suggested using Sigma Plot but apparently this program only work on Windows 7, 32bit, so I would prefer an alternative software/method.
Last thing, my dataset is very large (10 water depths, 1 temperature reading every 2 hours over a period of time >10 years!) . Thanks in advance!
Patrick
If you want a free software you can use Ocean Data View from AWI (Germany)
As I understand you should have the temperature profiles of many locations in the lake. So it seems that you need to have a 3D plot. If you don't want to write some codes (i.e. programming in MATLAB), I suggest you to use Fledermaus software which is a 4D geo-spatial processing and analysis tool. Also one of Golden Software products called Voxler is a very nice and easy to use graphics package.
Hi Mostafa, Thanks for the reply.
Actually I only have 1 location, which is in fact 1 mooring fitted with several thermistors (= temperature sensors) fixed at different water depths along the rope. So I don't need a 3D plots, just a 2D simple contour plot as I described in my original question.
Both PAST and 3Dmaps are free and draw contour plots:
nhm2.uio.no/norlex/past/download.html
http://3dfmaps.com/
Hi Patrick, I usually do those kind of plots with SURFER, from Golden Software. It has a user-friendly interface and you can easily manage different types of data formats.
Hi Patrick - I'm pretty sure that R can handle this, as you need to do some interpolation, then contouring.Let me know if you need some help to get started. Hope all is well
Simon
out of the visualization programs I 've tried, I would choose SURFER for this exercise. It also provides several options on how to calculate and render the interpolation producing very nice looking figures. As with any such tool there is a steep learning curve.
Dear Patric,
Since you are dealing with 3 variants and want to plot data in 2D plot, I think the software Grapher 4 or 5 will help you. This software is very easy to use and is compatible with all computers. But for contour map as you know the best is to use 2 variants and connect equal digits and then the plot will speak.
With regards,
Habib.
If you want a free software you can use Ocean Data View from AWI (Germany)
I'll second Luigi. Ocean Data View (ODV) can certainly do the trick, and it's easy to use. It's a bit tiresome to add new data to an existing project but if all your data is ready to go ODV is a good option. You need to register here: https://odv.awi.de/ but that's free and gives you access to a useful forum.
R is another free (and much more powerful) option but more complicated to use when you're aiming for contours and interpolated values as colors.
Thank you all for the excellent suggestions!
For info: as I needed a quick solution to plot a small subset of my data, I used SURFER 12.0 for Windows 10, as one of my colleague has it. It works very well.
I will try other options (including R) when I have a little more time.
Thanks again and best wishes, Patrick
Patrick, I also use the Surfer (both old and new versions). In my opinion, this is one of the best programs for your purposes.
I attach their articles with drawings made in Surfer.
Nikolay
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