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Topsoil is a desktop application and Java library that creates data visualizations for geochronologists and other earth scientists. The project is led and maintained by CIRDLES, an undergraduate research lab at the College of Charleston in Charleston, South Carolina.
"Topsoil" is an anagram of "Isoplot", the name of an enormously successful Microsoft Excel Add-In with similar capabilities that now works only in older versions of Excel.
If you are interested in learning more about Topsoil, please contact Jim Bowring.
Topsoil will run on Windows (x86 and x64), Linux (x86 and x64), and Mac (x64 only). Topsoil requires the latest version of Java (1.8 or higher), the installer for which can be found here.
To install Topsoil, download the latest JAR file from the releases page.
To run Topsoil, simply double click on the JAR file.
The easiest way to import data into Topsoil is to copy and paste it into the data table. First, select and copy the data in Excel that you want to import. The selected data must contiguous (although omissions are allowed) and have no more than one row of headers.
The data may then be pasted into Topsoil either by using the paste shortcut (Ctrl-p or ⌘-p on Mac) or by pressing the paste button in the center of the empty table.
To get started using Topsoil, let's walk through a simple use case that demonstrates the application's basic functionality.
Before starting, please install Topsoil.
After opening Topsoil, we first need to import some data. Copy the table below by first highlighting the text. Then, click on the Topsoil data table and paste it in by using the paste shortcut (control-v on Windows or command-v on Mac).
| 207Pb*/235U | 2s unct (%) | 206Pb*/238U | 2s unct (%) | unct corr |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 29.165688743 | 1.519417676 | 0.712165893 | 1.395116767 | 0.918191745 |
| 29.031535970 | 1.799945600 | 0.714916493 | 1.647075269 | 0.915069472 |
| 29.002008069 | 1.441943510 | 0.709482828 | 1.324922704 | 0.918845083 |
| 29.203969765 | 1.320690194 | 0.707078490 | 1.216231698 | 0.920906132 |
| 29.194452092 | 1.359029744 | 0.709615006 | 1.248057588 | 0.918344571 |
| 29.293320455 | 1.424328137 | 0.710934267 | 1.309135282 | 0.919124777 |
| 28.497489852 | 1.353243890 | 0.686951820 | 1.245648095 | 0.920490463 |
| 29.218573677 | 1.383868032 | 0.715702180 | 1.271276031 | 0.918639641 |
| 28.884872020 | 1.264304654 | 0.702153693 | 1.164978444 | 0.921438073 |
| 28.863259209 | 1.455550200 | 0.700081472 | 1.335582301 | 0.917579003 |
| 29.014325453 | 1.614480021 | 0.701464404 | 1.478394505 | 0.915709384 |
| 29.917885787 | 1.564622589 | 0.725185047 | 1.434906094 | 0.917094067 |
| 30.159907714 | 1.488528691 | 0.724886106 | 1.366282212 | 0.917874287 |
| 28.963153308 | 1.480754780 | 0.698240706 | 1.359750830 | 0.918282249 |
| 29.350104553 | 1.513999270 | 0.711983592 | 1.384417989 | 0.914411266 |
| 29.979576581 | 1.595745814 | 0.724426340 | 1.458894294 | 0.914239775 |
| 29.344673618 | 1.551935035 | 0.714166474 | 1.420060290 | 0.915025602 |
Now that we have data, let's make it into a new chart. To do this, first click the "Error Ellipse Chart" button on the toolbar. A dialog should now appear asking you to choose the columns that correspond to each of the variables. For this example, Topsoil's default selection is correct, so ensure that the x- and y-errors are identified as 1σ and percentages (or else choose the correct options from the drop down menus) and press "Create chart".
Congratulations! You have successfully created your first chart with Topsoil!