Visualization of time-dependent dynamics of postglacial rebound

Abstract

Postglacial rebound is a major geological process which plays an important role in many areas in the earth sciences. Up to now, most of the images derived from studies of the glacial isostatic adjustment phenomenon have been concerned with surface signatures, such as the uplift and gravity anomalies and not much attention has been paid on the dynamical responses in the mantle. We will make use of the 3D visualization package Amira to depict both the external and internal deformation histories of the transient viscoelastic flow inside the mantle induced by postglacial uplift. Of particularly great interest are the transient displacement fields and shear heating inside the mantle. This same visualization technology can be brought to bear in the future for visualizing tsunami waves in ocean basins excited by earthquakes, volcanic eruptions and In-SAR images. We have also integrated the visualization results into the Google Earth virtual globe by combining this scheme with the Amira package to provide a better geographical and dynamical context.

Visualization of tsunami waves with Amira package

“…We will use the Amira package (http://www.amiravis.com) as a vehicle for demonstrating the usefulness and importance of visualization, which goes hand in hand with numerical simulations. This facile tool Amira has been used by our group in many areas of science, ranging from mammograms (Arodz et al 2005), mantle convection (Erlebacher et al 2002;Wang et al 2007) to postglacial rebound (Hanyk et al 2007). The main purpose of this paper is to communicate to an interested audience the need for the use of visualization in tsunami studies, both in research efforts and in educational training.…”

“…Other discussions of the use of Amira can be found in Wang et al (2007) and Hanyk et al (2007). The Amira package has been around since 1999 and has been used for many types of problems, in particular in the bio-medical field (see also Arodz et al 2005).…”