Support for the Generic Mapping Tools

University Of Hawaii, Honolulu

Investigators

Abstract

The Generic Mapping Tools (GMT) software package has served marine scientists for almost 25 years. Thousands of federally funded US scientists have been trained to use GMT and count on GMT for their day-to-day research productivity. GMT?s power to process data and produce publication-quality graphics has made it a de facto standard for a large segment of geoscientists, often in combination with other opensource (e.g., Python) or commercial (e.g., MATLAB®) tools. GMT is a UNIX command-line tool set but developers can now design new tools using the GMT5 C/C++ Application Program Interface (API). Two such prototypes are the GMT/MATLAB API and an in-development GMT/Python API. The intertwined use of GMT, MATLAB® and Python encapsulates the working environment of a large group of marine geoscientists. The broader impacts of GMT software are extraordinary. GMT has a proven track record of being a fundamental part of US/NSF geoscience research infrastructure and benefits a wide range of scientists and the public on a global scale. The software promotes and enables science across the board in earth and ocean science on a truly international scale. The present project will undertake a transition of GMT from a PI-driven effort to a community-driven effort with the establishment of a GMT Steering Committee. Upgrades to version 5 of the software encompass assembling a Maintainers handbook, finalizing MGG tools, code hardening and creation of a Postscript Light plotting library for easier maintenance. Additional goals that are only partially covered by this effort include integration of externally supported geographic projection (PROJ4) library, an input/output library (OGR bridge) and the coastline database (using OpenStreetMap).