Skip to content

Latest commit

 

History

History
22 lines (15 loc) · 2.76 KB

making_sam_files.md

File metadata and controls

22 lines (15 loc) · 2.76 KB
Raw

.SAM file creation in Python

The repository you can find here: https://github.com/Swanson-Hysell-Group/SAM_Header contains Python code that takes paleomagnetic core orientation data from a .csv template and converts into the .sam format. This file format is used by the RAPID paleomag software (http://sourceforge.net/projects/paleomag/) that is used to generate paleomagnetic and rock magnetic data with 2G Enterprise superconducting rock magnetometers.

How to use the code:

  • Enter data into the spreadsheet template (sam_sample_template.xlsx or sam_sample_template.csv) and then save as a csv. One .csv file is needed for each site.
  • Run the python script mk_sam_file.py using command line specifying use of the .csv file you have saved:
~/$ python mk_sam_file.py site.csv [optional - output_path]
  • The code should then generate a .sam header file as well as sample files for each sample in the site.

Things to know:

  • The code is currently set up so that if there are sun compass data those data are preferentially used for the sample orientations. If there are no sun compass data, the magnetic compass data are used and they are corrected for the local magnetic declination calculated from the model IGRF field. Note that in both cases, the local magnetic declination value in the .sam file is set to be zero since the orientations are already corrected.
  • When there are coexisting magnetic and sun compass data, the difference between them (which is the local magnetic declination) is printed into the .csv file. If this calculated local magnetic declination is more than 5º away from the model IGRF field, a warning is printed to the terminal while the program is executing. It is recommended to examine the modified .csv file after the code is executed to inspect these calculated local magnetic declination values.
  • Bedding orientation should be entered as strike and dip. The column 'correct_bedding_using_local_dec' takes either 'yes' or 'no'. If 'yes' the local calculated IGRF declination will be used to correct the bedding strike. If 'no', the bedding strike will be left uncorrected.

Dependencies

The code requires the standard scientific python modules of numpy and scipy. Installing the Enthought Canopy python distribution (https://www.enthought.com/products/canopy/) is a way you can get quickly setup with python and the dependencies needed to run this code. Other necessary functions that were originally part of the PmagPy project (https://github.com/ltauxe/PmagPy/) that are dependencies for mk_sam_file.py have been collected in mk_sam_utilities.py which is included in the repository.