The Geography of Mars

Getting Your Data into Google Earth

• To have you create a CSV file that can imported into Google Earth Pro
• To show you how to import CSV files that has been grouped and then format placemarks during the process of mass database import (colors and icons)
• More generally, show you how to move fairly large amounts of data into Google Earth Pro at once for mapping, rather than having to go placemark by placemark. To do this requires Google Earth Pro (which is freely available at https://www.google.com/earth/desktop/), but, once a CSV has been converted into KML or KMZ form, it is usable by plain old Google Earth.
• To have you see the geochemical "personalities" of the Spirit rover's APXS targets, which you may have met during the GEOG 400/500 lab on principal components analysis

Deliverables:

A KMZ file showing the four basic types of rock materials that Spirit encountered during its first 470 sols in Gusev Crater.

• location of target
• type of rock material it was
• a brief lab report on the spatial patterning of the four types of targets

Preparing the CSV

Download the original data from https://home.csulb.edu/~rodrigue/geog441541/labs/GEintro/GusevPCA15GElab.ods and note where the file was deposited. It's safest to fire up OpenOffice Calc first and then use it to navigate to the file and open it up.

The file contains two tabs: Metadata describes the variables; Data is the tab you want for the lab. This sheet contains a column defining "Folders" or what the four rock and soil types are, "Name" (official target names for the labels on your maps), "Description" (informal names the teams used to describe their targets), "Sol" for the martian day on which a rock was zapped by APXS counting from the start of the mission, "Latitude," "Longitude," and then the PC scores for each of the three components that emerged during the GEOG 400/500 lab, which are the basis of classifying the targets.

Save your brand-new database in the original ODS format someplace convenient. Now, save the file as a CSV. This is because Google Earth Pro can import CSVs that Calc can readily create. Google Earth can't import spreadsheets any other way without gobs of expensive software.

To do this, Save As and specify Text CSV (.csv)(*.csv). At this point, please create your file name as YourLastNameGusev.csv, e.g., RodrigueGusev.csv. Why? Because I'm going to be downloading A LOT of KMZs and CSVs and I don't want to have a bunch of identical file names with no way to match each to its author! You may want to save this on a flash drive after all this work (or save it on the Desktop and e-mail it to yourself). Now, put that in the Lab 4 Dropbox, too.

Importing your CSV into Google Earth Pro

Fire up Google Earth Pro from the Desktop. After it loads and you shut down its little helpful hints, click on the Tools tab on the top toolbar and then Options. A dialogue box comes up. On the 3D View one, click on Decimal Degrees under Show Lat/Long. Under Units of Measurement, pick Meters, Kilometers. Now, under the Navigation tab, pick Do not automatically tilt while zooming, which tends to mess up the map function we're interested in here. All that done, hit OK.

Click on the Planets icon up top and select Mars (sort of obvious!). Now, hit the File tab up on the left.

Now to go get your data into Google Earth Pro: From the File tab, pick Import and navigate to wherever you put your LasstnameGusev.csv file. A dialogue box comes up so you can specify that it is a Delimited file (sometimes it comes up delimited by commas, sometimes delimited by tabs: If the preview window looks like your file, just hit Next (if it doesn't, try the other delimiter).

In this new dialogue, make sure that there is no check by "Does not include latitude and longitude" (because it does -- this option is for use of addresses on Earth for mapping instead of the geographic grid). Verify that the latitude and longitude field names are okay. Hit Next.

Now you can Specify field types. Most will register as string or integer variables. Latitude and Longitude, should be floating point, as will the three principal components on the right. Change any that aren't guessed correctly. Then, hit Finish.

Another small dialogue box comes up: Apply style template? Choose Yes. Choose New. Another dialogue box comes up with four tabs.

• Under Name, set the Name field as, well, the Name field
• Ignore Color.
• Under Icon, be sure to click Set icon from field and then choose Folder. Make sure there are four "buckets" and, very importantly, check create sub-folders for each bucket. That will give you a new column in which you can enter a name for each of your four buckets or rock types. Put aqueous in bucket 1; felsic in bucket 2; ultramafic in bucket 3; and basalt in bucket 4. Doing this will create four folders in your KMZ and allow you to mass-alter all the targets in a given folder at a later point without having to go target by target. You can just right-click on a folder and change its properties (icon, icon color, size of font for the name label, whatever). You could just pick some of Google Earth's icons (so many goofy choices!). The specific ones don't much matter at this point, as you can edit it later. The blank icons that look like outlines of squares, triangles, circles, and such (toward the middle of the icon pull-down menu) probably offer the most flexibility.
• Under the Height icon, it's probably best to pick Clamp features to ground. Unless you really like that circus-balloon effect of icons on strings floating above your APXS target! No accounting for taste!

On trying to Finish up, the program will ask you if you'd like to save your artistic endeavors as a template (KST file) you could recycle later for some future quick and dirty map job. Probably a good idea, just in case. We can't have enough fashion accessories for lazy future mapping.

Admire your handiwork!

At this point, surf around to see your rover traverses decorated with icons marking each spot Spirit nuked a target.

Getting at the "personalities" of the targets along the traverse

So, now you have your target types mapped and graphed.

• the most common type doesn't diverge from the Mars average relative abundances in anything, so it's no doubt basalt or ST1.
• another type shows high enrichment in mafic oxides (such as those of iron, magnesium, manganese, and chromium). This material, too, is basaltic, but it seems to represent ultramafic material from below the surface that has been brought up in major impacts and exposed along the rims and the ejecta blankets around craters and by erratics ejected out of a distant crater.
• another type seems to be generally basaltic but with elevated halogens (chlorine and bromine) and also nickel. The halogens readily dissolve and form salts in water and then concentrate at the surface and in veins and cracks when that water evaporates (chlorine usually comes out first and then bromine). This is the aqueous-alteration signal that the Spirit team was originally looking for.
• another, very distinctive type shows elevation in the felsic oxides (such as those of sodium, aluminum, silicon, phosphorous, potassium, and titanium) and is depleted of the mafic oxides, while signs of water alteration are depleted or Mars-typical). This is probably evolved igneous material (leaning in the andesitic direction or ST2), possibly material brought up in a messy pyroclastic flow.

Can you see spatial patterns of concentration for any of these types? How would you describe such concentrations in terms of the Gusev Crater floor the rover worked in at first and the Columbia Hills it ascended in the latter part of its travels.