Pål Wessel

Pål Wessel, pronounced as, and also known as, Paul Wessel, is a Professor of the Department of Geology and Geophysics at the School of Ocean and Earth Science and Technology (SOEST) at the University of Hawaii. He has taught as a visiting professor at Sydney University in Australia and University of Oslo in Norway. Dr. Wessel is a Fellow of the Geological Society of America.^[1]

Open source mapping tools and data

In 1988, he and Walter H. F. Smith created Generic Mapping Tools (GMT), an open-source collection of computer software tools for processing and displaying geographic and Cartesian datasets.^{[PW 1]} They later supplemented this with the Global Self-consistent, Hierarchical, High-resolution Shoreline Database (GSHHS) that they constructed from two public domain data sets, the World Data Bank II (WDB), also known as CIA Data Bank, and the World Vector Shoreline (WVS) data set.^{[PW 2]}

Geological and geophysical research

Areas in which Pål Wessel has conducted research include:

• Periodic co-pulsing of volcanic hot spots, including Hawaii, Yellowstone, Iceland, Easter Island, La Réunion, Tristan, the Galápagos, Samoa, Ontong Java, Tasmantid, the Society Islands, the Azores, Madeira, Canary Islands, Cape Verde Islands, St. Helena, Afar-Kenya, and others^{[PW 3][2]}
• Plate Tectonic Reconstructions and Hot Spot Fixity^{[PW 4][PW 5]}
• Improvement of marine geophysical data sets via data analysis^{[PW 6]}
• Thermo-mechanical Evolution and Properties of Oceanic Lithosphere^{[PW 7]}
• Flexural Deformation of Lithosphere at Seamounts, Fracture Zones, and Trenches^{[PW 8]}

See also

• Generic Mapping Tools
• GSHHS
• Hawaii hotspot

References

1. "Geological Society of America - Fellowship". Boulder, CO: Geological Society of America. Retrieved December 21, 2010.
2. O'Hanlon, Larry (September 22, 2010). "Earth's pulse felt at hot spots". New York: Discovery Communications, Inc. Archived from the original on November 13, 2010. Retrieved December 23, 2010.

Selected Bibliography

1. Wessel, P.; Smith, W. H. F. (1995). "New version of the generic mapping tools released". Eos, Transactions American Geophysical Union (Washington, DC: American Geophysical Union) 76 (33): 329. Bibcode:1995EOSTr..76..329W. doi:10.1029/95EO00198. ISSN 0002-8606. OCLC 1479928.
2. Wessel, Pål; Smith, Walter H. F. (April 2001). "A Global, Self-consistent, Hierarchical, High-Resolution Shoreline Database". Journal of Geophysical Research (Richmond, Va: William Byrd Press for Johns Hopkins Press) 101 (B4): 8741–8743. Bibcode:1996JGR...101.8741W. doi:10.1029/96JB00104. ISSN 0148-0227. OCLC 2396688. Archived from the original on April 26, 2004. Retrieved December 22, 2010.
3. Mjelde, Rolf; Wessel, Paul; Müller, R. Dietmar (October 2010). "Global pulsations of intraplate magmatism through the Cenozoic". Lithosphere (Boulder, CO: Geological Society of America) 2 (5): 361–376. doi:10.1130/L107. ISSN 1941-8264. OCLC 302419952. Retrieved December 24, 2010.
4. Wessel, Paul (9 August 2008). "Hotspotting: Principles and properties of a plate tectonic Hough transform". Geochemistry, geophysics, geosystems : G³ (Washington, DC: American Geophysical Union and the Geochemical Society) 9 (Q08004). Bibcode:2008GGG.....908004W. doi:10.1029/2008GC002058. ISSN 1525-2027. OCLC 41417292. Retrieved December 24, 2010.
5. Wessel, Pål (1993). "Observational Constraints on Models of the Hawaiian Hot Spot Swell". Journal of Geophysical Research (Richmond, Va: William Byrd Press for Johns Hopkins Press) 98 (B9): 16,095–16,104. Bibcode:1993JGR....9816095W. doi:10.1029/93JB01230. ISSN 0148-0227. OCLC 2396688. Archived from the original on October 20, 2000. Retrieved December 24, 2010.
6. Wessel, Pål; Becker, J. M. (July 2008). "Interpolation using a generalized Green's function for a spherical surface spline in tension". Geophysical Journal International (Oxford: Blackwell Science) 174 (1): 21–28. Bibcode:2008GeoJI.174...21W. doi:10.1111/j.1365-246X.2008.03829.x. ISSN 1365-246X. OCLC 48413162.
7. Wessel, P. (1992). "Thermal Stresses and the Bimodal Distribution of Elastic Thickness Estimates of the Oceanic Lithosphere". Journal of Geophysical Research (Richmond, Va: William Byrd Press for Johns Hopkins Press) 97 (B10): 4,177–14,193. Bibcode:1992JGR....9714177W. doi:10.1029/92JB01224. ISSN 0148-0227. OCLC 2396688. Retrieved December 24, 2010.
8. Kim, Seung-Sep; Wessel, Paul (August 2010). "Flexure modelling at seamounts with dense cores". Geophysical Journal International (Oxford: Blackwell Science) 182 (2): 583–598. Bibcode:2010GeoJI.182..583K. doi:10.1111/j.1365-246X.2010.04653.x. ISSN 1365-246X. OCLC 48413162.

External links

• Wessel, Pål (November 28, 2010). "Pål (Paul) Wessel". Honolulu: School of Ocean and Earth Science and Technology, University of Hawaii at Manoa. Retrieved December 22, 2010.: Pål Wessel’s GG/SOEST/UHM web page.
• Wessel, Paul (November 1, 2010). "The GMT Home Page". Honolulu: School of Ocean and Earth Science and Technology, University of Hawaii at Manoa. Retrieved December 22, 2010.
• "GSHHS A Global Self-consistent, Hierarchical, High-resolution Shoreline Database". Boulder, CO: National Geophysical Data Center (NGDC). November 1, 2010. Retrieved December 22, 2010.
• Wessel, Paul (July 21, 2010). "Geoware Online Store". Retrieved August 30, 2011. Geoware specializes in using GMT to make regional and global topographic maps of exceptional quality, and developing custom applications written in C or Unix shells. We also distribute the GMT Companion CD-R and DVD-Rs which provide the service of combining many public-domain data sets and software on easy-to-install CD- or DVD-Rs for both Linux/UNIX, Mac OS X, and Windows platforms (New versions as of July 15, 2010). Finally, we also distribute TTT, the tsunami travel time estimator for bathymetric grids.