Downloads

Lecture notes, slides, maps, and other visualizations

• See here for a more complete list of teaching material including
  • Textbooks and Lecture Notes
    • Numerical Geodynamics (Matlab based finite difference and finite element solution of solid Earth dynamics problems), and
    • Becker, T.W. and Faccena, C.: Tectonic Geodynamics. Princeton University Press, 2025.
  • Lab to Planet Geodynamics Jupyter Notebooks
  • Lecture slides and presentations on
    • Geoscientific data analysis using UNIX and GMT,
    • Intro-level plate tectonics, earthquake physics, and seismic hazard (5 ppt)
    • Grad level Mantle Convection (3 ppt)
    • Subduction zone modeling (5 PDF)
• Teaching and research visualizations,
• Global plate tectonic maps for poster printing,
• My geophysics and general Earth science bibtex literature database with >~6,000 entries, mainly in the fields of geodynamics and seismology, in raw bibtex, BibTex HTML, sorted HTML, and EndNote XML formats

Geodynamic and Seismological Models and Data

• shear wave (SKS) splitting compilation (updated from Becker et al., 2012)
• lithospheric thickness models from Steinberger and Becker (2016)
• spreading-aligned plate motion reference frame (Becker et al., 2015)
• upper mantle seismic anisotropy model from mantle flow (Becker et al., 2008)
• seismic tomography models (including SMEAN(2) and SAVANI)
• dynamic topography estimates from Becker et al. (2014)
• velocity grids for main flow models from Faccenna et al. (2013)

Software

• Lab to Planet Geodynamics Jupyter Notebooks

  A set of Jupyter notebooks of Python ODE and PDE teaching modules developed by Dunyu Liu and myself for UT GEO Lab to Planet, an undergraduate class focused on lab and computer experiments to develop an understanding of how simple physical systems based on key constitutive laws can be used to understand the Earth system.
  • The Github repository includes teaching modules for simple driven harmonic oscillators, stick-slip friction, rate-state friction, the Lorentz system, heat conduction, Stokes flow (using an interface to FEniCX), as well as surface transport problems (with an interface to Landlab).

• Megathrust Modeling Framework (MTMOD) Software pages

• fstrack: Seismic anisotropy from flow predictor

  Status: Stable release available, minor updates.

  Package with tools to analyze symmetry components of elastic tensors, predict synthetic waveforms and compute automated shear wave splitting along ray paths, and to track finite strain and predict LPO from mantle flow given on GMT/netcdf grds.

  Includes Kaminski & Ribe (2001) type LPO texture formation modeling and Browaeys and Chevrot (2003) decomposition routines (as provided by DREX by Kaminski), as well as single and multiple layer SKS seismogram synthetics and splitting computation (codes from Schulte-Pelkum and Blackman). A version of fstrack was used for Becker et al. (2006a, 2006b, 2008).

  Please keep in mind that this is a research product and so subject to change; installation and usage is described in README files, but may require some user intervention. However, fstrack is also included fully compiled in UGESCE. Also note that a lot of the software in this package is copyrighted by other people, and you may wish to use the original codes (e.g. DREX) rather than our versions.

  • fstrack code on GitHub
  • complete tar balls:
    • latest fstrack release
    • fstrack-0.6.081624.tgz: Newest version, which allows compilation of anisotropy and LPO routines indendent from flow tracker (no reliance on GMT and HC), and has some internal code modifications. Should be identical in functionality to old version, but less thoroughly tested.
    • fstrack-0.3.062614.tgz: old version, used for prior work up and including 2014.
  • full install of older version of fstrack (and much else) within UGESCE

  The main references for fstrack are:

  • Becker, T. W., Schulte-Pelkum, V., Blackman, D. K., Kellogg, J. B., and O'Connell, R. J.: Mantle flow under the western United States from shear wave splitting, Earth Planet. Sci. Lett., 247, 235-251, 2006. (PDF)
  • Becker, T. W., Kustowski, B., Ekström, G.: Radial seismic anisotropy as a constraint for upper mantle rheology. Earth Planet. Sci. Lett., 267, 213-237, 2008. (PDF)

• hc: Hager & O'Connell spherical flow computations

  Status: Stable release available, minor updates.

  Global mantle circulation solver following Hager & O'Connell (1981). This software is a modular, C-language rewrite of Bernhard Steinberger's FORTRAN code and developed by Becker, Craig O'Neill, and others. The code has been tested for computation of velocities, tractions, and the geoid given incompressible, Newtonian flow in the mantle for only radially varying viscosity.

  The spherical harmonic format from Becker & Boschi (2002) can be read by HC to compute velocities for spherical harmonic models, and a graphical user interface to HC is provided by SEATREE.

  Availability and documentation:

  • HC is one of the modules of SEATREE which also provides a graphical user interface, editing tools, and example input data. I recommend to download HC with the SEATREE package, both also included fully compiled and installed in
    • CIG CIDER2016 Summer Program VirtualBox (use hc_user, no password, run SEATREE from the desktop)
    • our VirtualBox geodynamics environment UGESCE.
  • Tar balls:
    • hc-recent.tgz (most recent release)
    • hc-1.1.1.052623.tgz
  • HC code on GitHub.
  • Standalone release and binaries are available from CIG, but I suggest to use HC's github page.

  Reference:

  • Becker, T. W., O'Neill, C., and Steinberger, B. (2009): HC, a global mantle circulation solver. Available online at https://github.com/geodynamics/hc, accessed 03/2022.

• shansyn: spherical harmonics packages for GMT/Netcdf grids

  Status: Stable release available, minor updates.

  My spherical harmonics analysis/synthesis programs shana and shsyn which use GMT (versions 4.X.X. and 6+) respectively Netcdf grd files for I/O, and interoperate with the seismic tomography models from Becker & Boschi (2002). The most recent code is here:

  • shansyn code repository on GitHub
  • tar balls of the code
    • latest release
    • shansyn.1.6-070923.tgz (new version, all GMT versions)
    • shansyn.1.2.7-012818.tgz (old version, only for GMT4)
  The spherical harmonic format from Becker & Boschi (2002) can also be read by the tools provided with the hc flow code and SEATREE, as included in UGESCE. A number of seismic tomography models in this spherical harmonic format are on GitHub

  Reference:

  • Becker, T. W. and Boschi, L.: A comparison of tomographic and geodynamic mantle models, Geochem., Geophys., Geosys., 3(1), 1003, doi:10.1029/2001GC000168, 2002. (PDF)

• interact: boundary element fault interactions

  Status: Research release available, minor developments.

  An MPI parallel, Okada (1992) dislocation solution based, boundary-element program to compute displacements and stress given slip, and solve for slip given stress conditions, as well as simulate earthquake cycles based on fault interactions. The main software is written in C and uses slighyly improved versions of the Okada Fortran routines and calls on Petsc for parallel LU solves.

  You can read more on seismology projects page. The latest versions can be downloaded here

  • interact code on GitHub, development version
  • latest interact tar-ball (11/27/2023)

  References/use cases:

  • Becker, T. W. and Schott, B.: On boundary-element models of elastic fault interaction (abstract). Eos Trans. AGU, 83(47), Fall Meet. Suppl., Abstract NG62A-0925, 2002. (PDF)
  • Becker, T. W., Hardebeck, J. L., and Anderson, G.: Constraints on fault slip rates of the southern California plate boundary from GPS velocity and stress inversions. Geophys. J. Int., 160, 634-650, 2005. (PDF)

• Unified Geodynamics Earth Science Computing Environment (UGESCE)

  Status: Stable release available, accepting bug reports.

  A VirtualBox Linux installation (i.e. a repacking of existing software) that contains fstrack, SEATREE, iGMT, GMT, and a range of Earth science software and datasets.

  • UGESCE web site

• Solid Earth Research and Teaching Environment (SEATREE)

  Status: Stable release available, accepting bug reports.

  We are developing a python-based, modular, graphical and script driven interface to solid Earth geodynamics and seismology modeling tools. The goal is to provide easy access to research tools for teaching, and to facilitate interdisciplinary research. SEATREE includes an interface to the hc mantle flow tool and seismic mantle tomography tools. See the SEATREE project web page for the current status, and for access to the source code, see the

  • SEATREE GitHub site
  • CIG CIDER2016 Summer Program VirtualBox (use hc_user, no password, run SEATREE from the desktop)

  Reference:

  • Milner, K., Becker, T. W., Boschi, L., Sain, J., Schorlemmer, D. and H. Waterhouse: The Solid Earth Research and Teaching Environment: a new software framework to share research tools in the classroom and across disciplines. Eos Trans. AGU, 90, 12, 2009. (PDF).

• iGMT: Graphical user interface and GMT script generator

  Status: Stable release available, accepting bug reports.

  A graphical user interface for the Generic Mapping Tools (GMT) written in Tcl/Tk and used around the world to teach GMT. Useful to learn and teach GMT, and to generate simple example scripts for general Earth science map making.

  • iGMT on GitHub
  • igmt-recent tar file
  • igmt_v1.2-20080724.tgz stable release tar file
  You can read more on the iGMT project page, and might also be interested in the SEATREE project's python GMT wrappers, and the Unified Geodynamics Earth Science Computing Environment.

  Reference:

  • Becker, T. W. and Braun, A.: New program maps geoscientific datasets interactively. EOS Transactions AGU, 79 (42), 505-506, 1998. (PDF)

• bin_catalog Kostrov, Michael (1984), and Vavryčuk (2014) stress inversion from focal mechanism tool

  bin_catalog is a C language package with a set of simple earthquake catalog and focal mechanism catalog handling routines, including for creating Kostrov strain summations, Michael (1984) stress inversions, and Vavryčuk (2014) optimized stress inversions.
  • bin_catalog source code on GitHub
  • the code contains C language rewrites of software by
    • Michael, A.J., 1984. Determination of stress from slip data: Faults and folds, J. Geophys. Res. 89, 11.517-11.526.
    • Michael, A.J., 1987. Use of focal mechanisms to determine stress: A control study, J. Geophys. Res. 92, 357-368.
    • Vavryčuk, V., 2014. Iterative joint inversion for stress and fault orientations from focal mechanisms, Geophysical Journal International, 199, 69-77.

• grd2vtk geographic data to VTK conversion tools

  Grd2vtk is a script that converts a single, or several, layered, geographic Netcdf (GMT) grd files into VTK format as used, e.g., by Paraview. Grd2vtk_cart does so for Cartesian (3-D) datasets. See README for grd2vtk and grd2vtk_cart for comments.

  Also contains a range of AWK scripts to convert polygons, earthquake hypocenters, and focal mechanisms/beach balls into VTK.

  • recent tar file with grd2vtk scripts
  • GitHub repository for grd2vtk tools

• Minor scripts, tools, patches, etc.

  • plot_ternary: A GMT script to generate ternary diagrams
    
  • ssrf_surface: spherical GMT surface gridder
    A GMT surface-like wrapper routine for SSRFPACK by Renka which allows to interpolate irregular data on a sphere. (Now included, differently, in GMT itself.) You can read more on my iGMT project page, or download the latest version:
    • ssrf.010506.tar.gz
  • ndk2meca.awk: Gawk script to convert ndk to psmeca
    The script will convert Global CMT ndk format output to GMT psmeca format and select mechanism types.
  • CitcomS and CitcomCU extensions (e.g. GMT grd support, VTK formatting, anisotropic viscosity, strain tracking) are all updated in the Citcom CIG GitHub repository.