Pygplates - add new connection

Q&A
1

I’m trying to do some analysis in pyGplates, using an alternative reconstruction model for the Pacific - as discussed in Hu et al. “Dynamics of the abrupt change in Pacific Plate motion around 50 million years ago”. The gplates files are archived at Data set for manuscript "Dynamics of the abrupt change in Pacific Plate motion around 50 Ma".

In the GUI GPlates, loading this model requires “adding a new connection”, which seems to have the effect of linking the north Pacific features and rotations, into the global model.

My question is, can the same be achieved in pyGplates? What I want to work with is the resolved topology of the Pacifc Plate.

Thanks

2

This seems to work: pygplates.RotationModel accepts multiple file names.

input_topology_filename1  = data_dir + 'Global_EarthByte_230-0Ma_GK07_AREPS_PlateBoundaries.gpml'
rotation_filename1 = data_dir + 'Global_EarthByte_230-0Ma_GK07_AREPS.rot'

input_topology_filename2  = data_dir + 'North_Pacific_features.gpml'
rotation_filename2 = data_dir + 'North_Pacific.rot'

topology_features = pygplates.FeatureCollection(input_topology_filename1)
topology_features2 =  pygplates.FeatureCollection(input_topology_filename2)

topology_features.add(topology_features2)

rotation_model = pygplates.RotationModel([rotation_filename1, rotation_filename2], 
                                         default_anchor_plate_id=anchor_plate_id)
3

That’s right. PyGPlates will generally match the ability of the GPlates GUI (and it many cases be more flexible than it).