MATLAB helps geoscientists investigate and understand the interactions, preconditions, and trends related to Earth, ocean, and atmosphere dynamic systems. With MATLAB, you can:
- Import and manage geo-data from various sources and data portals in a range of formats
- Create 2D and 3D maps and visualizations
- Use built-in tools and develop custom algorithms to process time series and images, perform advanced geospatial analyses, and build predictive models
- Share code and models, enabling other researchers to access, reproduce, and build upon your work
Visualizing Geospatial Data
Teaching Computation in Geoscience
Community-Developed Code
Getting Started with MATLAB
Data Access
You can access and integrate diverse geoscience data from portals that are compatible with MATLAB. MATLAB supports various data formats, letting you import, process, and analyze datasets—from satellite imagery to climate records to seismological and hydrological data. Accessing data with MATLAB, you can:
- Use Climate Data Store Toolbox to download global climate data from ECMWF for analysis in MATLAB, in formats such as NetCDF, HDF5, GRIB, and text
- Download, process, and visualize earthquake catalogs directly from the ISC Bulletin using ISC Earthquake Toolbox for MATLAB
- Export images and raster grids to GeoTIFF format to convert, visualize, and share geospatial data
Mapping and Visualization
Use MATLAB built-in tools to create custom plots, graphs, and interactive maps with multiple data layers. You can create 3D terrain models, real-time simulations, and geological visualizations using various data sources like digital elevation models (DEMs), satellite imagery, and waveform data. With these visualization tools, you can:
- Visualize a range of plot types
- Display fault lines on a geographic globe using Mapping Toolbox functions
- Explore interactively aerial hyperspectral data from a visible/infrared imaging spectrometer using the Hyperspectral Viewer app
Data Analysis and Modeling
Explore MATLAB capabilities and toolboxes to process and analyze Earth, ocean, and atmospheric data for applications in seismology, ocean and climate science, hydrology, agriculture, and more. Use MATLAB to:
- Explore and filter seismic waveforms, hydrological time series, or audio signals and automatically generate code with the Signal Analyzer app
- Interactively implement image segmentation and AI techniques to classify regions from satellite images (Blog)
- Analyze and visualize climate data with Climate Data Toolbox
Sharing
You can package your scripts, functions, and data into shareable files, create dynamic interactive live scripts, and generate comprehensive reports.
Examples of sharing MATLAB code and outputs with colleagues:
- Toolbox: Analysis of relief and flow pathways in digital elevation models with TopoToolbox
- Notebook: Precipitation Variability Analysis example using the CMIP6 database (Live Script and Jupyter Notebook)
- Reusable code: Water masses classification reproducibility capsule on Code Ocean
- Standalone app: Analysis and tracking of GPS animal movement data with an open-source animal tracking app
