DOI: 10.6084/m9.figshare.28432280.v1
title: Global Source-to-sink Domain Map

description: This dataset contains the global raster files (at 250 m resolution) associated with a manuscript that has been accepted at the journal <i>Geology</i>:<b><i>The unexpected global distribution of Earth's sediment sources and sinks</i></b><br><i>Harrison K. Martin</i><sup><em>1,</em></sup><i>* and Michael P. Lamb</i><sup><em>1</em></sup><br><sup><em>1</em></sup><i>Division of Geological and Planetary Sciences, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA, 91125, U.S.A.</i><i>*hkm@caltech.edu</i>The paper describes a spatially continuous high-resolution (250 meter) global map of sediment source, bypass, and sink domains. If you use the data in your own research or projects, please include references to the paper above and to this dataset.<br><br>This repository contains three main items: 1) the global raster map, 2) MATLAB code used to create the map, and 3) reduced intermediate data designed to work with the MATLAB code, so that users can recreate or modify the map locally without downloading and processing all of the original input data. <br>The three items are described below. <b>Most users will only need to download the global map (1).</b><br>Item (1), the global map, is found in the .zip file: <b>"</b><b>mask_strat_241022.zip"</b><br>Items (2) and (3), the MATLAB code and intermediate data files, are found in the .zip file: <b>"</b><b>Source-to-sink Map EE 241022 public.zip"</b><br><b>1) Global raster map: </b><br>The dataset consists of 60 GeoTIFF tiles, each 12,000 pixels by 12,000 pixels (or fewer for edge tiles). Each pixel is 250 meters by 250 meters. Tiles are in the WGS 84 / Equal Earth Greenwich projection (https://epsg.io/8857). For convenience, also included is a .vrt (Virtual Raster) file, which can be opened in your GIS software of choice to load all tiles at once. Tiles are saved as .tif files containing 8-bit integer values, and are compressed using the PackBits algorithm. This substantially reduces the filesize of the resulting dataset without any loss of information.This dataset was created using a combination of QGIS and Matlab, and the method is described in the supporting information of the above manuscript.Pixel values are as follows:<br>0: Ocean (can be set as the noData value in your GIS software for easier visualization)1: Sink<br>2: Bypass<br>3: Source<br>4: Missing Data<br><br><b>2) MATLAB code:</b><br>This code can be run to reproduce our results. It comes in a folder with three subdirectories used to read the inputs and write TIF raster outputs (same as (1) above) and, optionally, PNGs. There is also a .txt file in there with instructions to run the code. I tried to make it as simple as possible to run. I also tried to design it with scientific computing in mind, i.e., able to be run in reasonable time by lower performance computers. Considering it's making a global map, the memory requirements are fairly small. On my computer, it takes less than ten minutes to reproduce the global map.<br><br><b>3) Intermediate files:</b><br>A folder containing ten tiled intermediate datasets, described in the Supplemental Information of the Geology manuscript. This is the input that the MATLAB code in (2) reads. These files go into the "VRTs" folder in the same directory as the MATLAB code. These files are all standardized, compressed, tiled, rasterized at the right resolution and in the right CRS, etc. This folder, including the code, instructions, and intermediate files, is zipped to 188 MB compared to &gt;5.5 GB if users were to download the original datasets themselves. <br><br><br><br>Please feel free to reach out with any questions!- Harrison Martin<br><br>Postdoctoral Scholar Research Associate in Geology<br>CaltechJune 24 2025<br>hkm@caltech.eduhttps://harrison.studies.rocks<br><br><b>EDIT (25/06/24):</b> Made repository public, uploaded the code and intermediate files, and expanded the description accordingly.