Conversions, Fortran, and Residual

August 5th, 2010

With only 1 1/2 weeks left it's really crunch time. I still have to work with my advisor to create a code to convert from unformatted ASCII files to SAC files for one of our digitization programs. She uses Fortran and luckily I have used Fortran before as well but this is a different type of code like nothing I've ever written before - it simply reformats the ascii file into 2 columns - time versus amplitude. Once we get that code working I can run all my ascii files through the code and get the corresponding sac files. I then have to include these in my report and take time to analyze which software is best for which types of seismograms. 

Another thing my advisor mentioned to me was converting all our sac files to ascii files (a much easier feat) to plot similar traces together (same trace but perhaps manual versus auto tracing) and see how they compare. When you see the digitized files plotted on top of one another it's a good way to see the discrepancies in the digital traces. In addition to plotting the files together you can also calculate the differences in your x y column data and plot that as well. I was able to write a Fortran code to calculate the differences in x and y values for 2 files and then plot the residual. I'm still working on analyzing the residual data but hopefully should have enough information about residual trace data to be able to include it in my report. 

A thank you to Rob for helping me with the sac to ascii and ascii to sac conversions!