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Teach the Earth > Petrology > Geochemical Data Plotting Programs

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Petrology Geochemical Plotting Programs Teaching with EarthChem
Geochemical Instrumentation
Petrology Course This site contains a compilation of geochemical plotting programs compiled by Sumit Teaching Geochemistry
Goals Chakraborty, Ruhr-Universität Bochum, with input from colleagues on the Mineralogical
Course Descriptions Society of America email list. This list is intended to facilitate representation of geochemical data to support teaching

Using Primary and research in the geosciences. Inclusion on this list does not imply endorsements of commercial or open source
Literature software. You will have to experiment with these programs and find the best fit for your own purposes. Paraphrasing
the input from one colleague, "...I have yet to find a satisfactory choice of software that integrates ease of use, rigor,
Incorporating Data
and layout quality that requires little if any manual work after generating the plot." Happy plotting!
Teaching Petrology in
the Field
Jump down to: Ternary and Tetrahedral Plotting Programs | Spider Diagrams and Other Specialized
Selected Starting
Plots | Isotopic Data Plotting Programs | Mineral Composition Plotting Programs
Resources

Teaching Activities

Selected References

Additional Resources General Geochemical Plotting Programs

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 Minerals, Inclusions IgPet -- commercial software from RockWare; draws most types of
and Volcanic Processes petrologic diagrams, including Harker, Fenner, triangular and log
Analytical Geochemical plots. A calculator includes (+ - / *), Log, square, square root,
Instrument Registry ppm and chondrite functions. Special purpose diagrams, e.g. the

2011 Workshop Irvine and Baragar (1971) rock classification scheme, are stored in
control files that can be expanded easily. CMAS projections include
2003 Workshop
O'Hara, Walker, Grove, Baker and Eggler etc. Spider diagrams
Contribute Materials include REES, Wood, Thompson, Sun and McDonough etc.).

Excel--Microsoft spreadsheet program. Most "canned plots" or

"stock diagrams" can be generated. Diagrams can be exported to
most drawing programs, such as Corel, for "prettying up". Can do
basic modeling such as melting, fractionation, AFC. Can be used
Petrology resources
from across Teach the with mineral data as well, but fewer built in diagrams. NOTE: If
Earth » you have Excel spreadsheets set up to do geochemical
plotting, please send the files to Dave Mogk (mail to: mogk AT montana.edu) for posting on
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this list.

Aabel -- Commercial plotting program for Mac computers. Templates for various kinds of plots (ternary,
spider diagrams etc.) available. If you select a point or cluster of points on a plot, it is highlighted in the
spreadsheet. Many statistical packages are available. Compatible with Excel, which makes it easy to
manipulate data and calculate things with formulas.

GCDKIT A freeware written in R. (a computer language for statistical computing and graphics). Details
can be found in: Janoušek, V., Farrow, C. M. & Erban, V. 2006. Interpretation of whole-rock geochemical
data in igneous geochemistry: introducing Geochemical Data Toolkit (GCDkit). Journal of Petrology
47(6):1255-1259. "Free, fast and good quality graphics. Informative website, and short learning time.
Announced as a package for Igneous Petrology but can be generalized to plot any other kind of plots."

Petrograph -- Free software that is user friendly. Similar to

MINPET. Possible to plot many classification diagrams and
"petro-tectonic" plots. Source code is written in MS Visual Basic
6.0 and it runs under Windows 98/2000/XP platforms. See:

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 Petrelli M.*, Poli G., Perugini D. & Peccerillo A. (2005)
Petrograph: a New Software to Visualize, Model, and Present
Geochemical Data in Igneous Petrology, Geochem. Geophys.
Geosyst., Vol. 6, Q07011, 26 July 2005

IGOR Pro 6 -- Commercial software. From their web page: "Igor

is an extraordinarily powerful and extensible scientific graphing,
data analysis, image processing and programming software tool
for scientists and engineers. Attributes: Macintosh and Windows
Platforms, Journal-quality scientific graphs, 3D and volume
visualization, Flexible image display, Handles large data sets
very quickly, Extensive scientific and engineering data analysis,Curve fitting, peak fitting, Signal
processing, Image processing and image analysis. A favorite of some geoscientists, but no details were
given.

Sigmaplot – General scientific plotting program. You can create templates, and then it is a matter of
simple cut and paste. Interfaces nicely with Excel.

Origin 8 – General scientific plotting program. Includes some features not easily done in Excel; e.g. (1)
can label the points of a single x-y plot, (2) generate triangular plots and (3) various histograms. Also,
(4) can save and re-use anytime later the preferred plot templates. Interfaces with Excel.

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Ternary and Tetrahedral Plotting

programs
TernPlot (Excel 103kB Feb25 09) -- An Excel spreadsheet for
plotting ternary diagrams. Reference: Marshall, Daniel
(1996), Ternplot: An Excel spreadsheet for Ternary
diagrams, Computers and Geosciences, vol. 22 #6, p.
697-699. Submitted by Sarah K. Carmichael,
Appalachian State University.

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 CSPACE -- CSpace plots data in a tetrahedron (including
stereo view). Cspace also performs mass-balance
models, including, for example, mode -molar or
oxyequivalent units- estimation from WR analyses, WR
geochemical mass-balance, and model minerals
reactions. See this example from John Winter. Citation:
TORRES ROLDÁN R.L., GARCÍA CASCO A, GARCÍA
SÁNCHEZ P.A. (2000) CSpace: An integrated workplace
for the graphical and algebraic analysis of phase
assemblages on 32-bit Wintel platforms. Computers and
Geosciences 26, 779-793. doi:10.1016/S0098-
3004(00)00006-6. Works on a PC.

Tetplot -- tetrahedral plotting program by Frank Spear, RPI. Works only on Mac OS.

Analysen-Tetraeder -- (in German), also works on a Mac.

Tetlab and Trinity -- freeware applications (for Mac OS X Tiger or later ) that plot tetrahedral and ternary
diagrams respectively. Both programs support drawing of tie-lines between data points and plotting
outside of the diagrams (negative coordinate values). From Peter Appel, University of Kiel.

Tri-Plot -- Tri-plot is a Microsoft® Excel spreadsheet for the preparation of triangular (ternary) diagrams
for particle-shape and tri-variate data. Written by David Graham and Nicholas Midgley, now at the Dept.
of Geography, Loughborough University. Citation: Graham DJ and Midgley NG. 2000, Graphical
representation of particle shape using triangular diagrams: an Excel spreadsheet method. Earth Surface
Processes and Landforms, 25(13): 1473-1477.

A template for ternary plots (Excel 45kB Nov17 09) using Excel from Yaoling Niu, Professor of Earth Sciences,
Department of Earth Sciences, Durham University. Igneous AFM diagram is demonstrated, but the
ternary components can be readily modified to accommodate any ternary components.

GGTERN--Ternary diagrams in R (an extension of GGPLOT2); submitted by Nicholas Hamilton, School of

Materials Science and Engineering, Univesity of New South Wales, Sydney Australia; see a worked
example from the ZrO2-SiO2-Al2O3 system.

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 Spider Diagrams and other Specialized Plots Back to Top

Spider Diagram (Excel 104kB Nov18 09)--an Excel plotting program submitted by Jim Mungall, University of
Toronto; make the plots in Excel and then port into a drawing program for final presentation.

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Isotopic Data Plotting Programs

ISOPLOT. Free to use with permission of author. It runs on PC and Mac with OFFICE 2004 (not with 2008
Mac office version).

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Mineral Composition Plotting Program
The MinCalc-V5 Program (Acrobat (PDF) 340kB May4 10) from Heinz-Juergen Bernhardt. MINCALC-V5 combines a)
storage and retrieval of analyses data, b) simple and versatile analyses selection, c) flexible output, d)
formula recalculation, which may be programmed by the user, e) simple plotting of all measured and
computed variables. The installation package can be downloaded at ftp://ftp.min.rub.de/pub/MINCALC-
V5 . Please test this program and send feedback to the author!

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Please send information about any additional geochemical plotting programs to: Dave Mogk (mogk AT
montana.edu). Copies of templates used in any of the above programs will be especially appreciated (we
will post these directly on this site with attribution). You may also contribute teaching activities (problem
sets, labs, etc.) that you have developed that use geochemical datasets. Individual contributions from
many will help us develop a commonwealth of resources for all to use!

Petrology resources from across Teach the Earth »

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