MATLAB� Recipes for Earth Sciences - Hardcover

Martin H. Trauth

9783540727484: MATLAB� Recipes for Earth Sciences

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 3540727485 ISBN 13: 9783540727484

Publisher: Springer, 2007

MATLAB is used in a wide range of applications in geosciences, such as image processing in remote sensing, generation and processing of digital elevation models and the analysis of time series. This book introduces methods of data analysis in geosciences using MATLAB such as basic statistics for univariate, bivariate and multivariate datasets, jackknife and bootstrap resampling schemes, processing of digital elevation models, gridding and contouring, geostatistics and kriging, processing and georeferencing of satellite images, digitizing from the screen, linear and nonlinear time-series analysis and the application of linear time-invariant and adaptive filters. The revised and updated Second Edition includes new subchapters on windowed Blackman-Tukey, Lomb-Scargle and Wavelet powerspectral analysis, statistical analysis of point distributions and digital elevation models, and a full new chapter on the statistical analysis of directional data. The text includes a brief description of each method and numerous examples demonstrating how MATLAB can be used on data sets from earth sciences. All MATLAB recipes can be easily modified in order to analyse the reader's own data sets. The book comes with a CD containing exemplary data sets and a digital version of the MATLAB recipes.

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About the Author:

Martin Trauth, born in Landau/Pfalz in 1963, studied geophysics and geology at the University of Karlsruhe. He obtained a doctoral degree at Kiel University in 1995 and then became a permanent staff scientist and lecturer at the University of Potsdam. After his habilitation in 2003, he received the venia legendi for geosciences and the status of privatdozent at this university. Since 1990, he has worked on various aspects of past climate changes in East Africa and South America. His projects aim to understand the role of the tropics in terminating ice ages, the relationship between climate changes and human evolution, and the influence of climate anomalies on mass movements in the Central Andes. All these projects include the application of numerical and statistical methods using MATLAB, such as time-series analysis and signal processing on paleoclimate time series, lake-balance modeling, stochastic modeling of bioturbation and image processing on laminated sediments. For more than ten years, Martin Trauth has taught various courses on data analysis in earth sciences at the University of Potsdam and other European universities.

Review:

This is a well written, perhaps slightly overpriced book, providing an overview and starting point for a wide range of applications in geosciences, such as image processing in remote sensing, generation and processing of digital elevation models and the analysis of time series - as stated. Also, as stated, the book introduces methods of data analysis in geosciences using MATLAB. I purchased the book for the "applications in geosciences" part and not the "MATLAB" part. I have nothing, in particular, against using MATLAB, but I choose to use Python. Python is free, and I (and many, many others) believe it to provide more manageable and powerful numerical analysis capabilities as well as better overall peripheral integration (integrating with other programming languages, applications, OS systems, or other platform specifics). The nice thing about the book is that the MATLAB code snippets and brief implementation explanations, can be easily translated into python implementation. If you are tied to MATLAB, I don't think you will be disappointed. If you have some familiarity with python then you will also be able to glean allot from the content. Another reason that I enjoy this book, is that while it relies on quite a bit of advanced math and its application, it uses the math as an 'engineering type' book should - as a tool to use to solve a problem. The mathematical element flows nicely with the subject matter and I suspect that even an individual without a mathematics background could gain an appreciation for the math based on the context and would not necessarily need to know or learn every underlying aspect of theory that generated the mathematics used. This is refreshing to see in an advanced book - here is what you might be up against, here is what you need to get the job done.

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