Maps And Profiles#

The web app has three spatial views over the active survey: Map View for station geometry and map-style attributes, Profile View for per-station responses and along-line pseudosections, and the 3D Map for an interactive resistivity scene. Together they are the fastest way to confirm that a loaded survey is spatially coherent and physically plausible before you run QC, correction, or inversion.

All three read the same active survey and the same station selection, so a station picked on the map is the station shown in the profile view.

Recommended Inspection Order#

Use the views in a fixed order when opening a survey. It keeps interpretation from running ahead of basic data checks:

Map View — station overview — confirm station positions, line grouping, and coordinate sanity.
Map View — colour by elevation / resistivity — look for missing elevations and broad lateral contrasts.
Profile View — ρₐ / φ — inspect response curves for a few representative stations.
Profile View — pseudosections — check along-line continuity and frequency coverage.
Profile View — Phase Tensor / Tipper — check dimensionality and directionality before strike or 2-D assumptions.
3D Map — only after station geometry and responses look credible.

Map View#

Map View opens the interactive station basemap. It starts with station geometry, which is the first thing to inspect after loading — it shows whether station order, line grouping, and coordinates make sense before any interpolation or colouring.

Left-hand controls

Selected Station card — the station currently in focus, with its line, latitude, longitude, elevation, frequency count, and tipper availability.
Map Type — what the map draws. Station overview shows locations and labels; other types colour stations by a spatial attribute.
Colour by — the quantity used to colour markers (for example station index, elevation, or apparent resistivity).
Display — marker style, labels, and overlays.
Coordinate System — how station coordinates are interpreted (geographic latitude/longitude, a UTM zone, or a custom EPSG code). Set this before enabling basemap tiles.
Basemap — optional map tiles for external context.

Top toolbar

Fit re-frames the map to the survey extent.
Labels toggles station labels.
Profiles toggles the survey-line connectors.
Contour draws interpolated contours over the stations.
Basemap selects a tile style.

Plotly interactions

The map is a Plotly figure. Use the modebar (top-right of the figure) to pan, zoom, and take a PNG snapshot with the camera button; double-click to reset the view. Clicking a station selects it — the selection syncs to the station list and to Profile View.

Tip

Check the Coordinate System before trusting any geophysical pattern. If the station cloud looks stretched, mirrored, or far from its expected area, the input CRS is usually wrong — fix it before enabling basemap tiles or reading contours.

Contours over station locations are an interpolation. Read them with the station layout in mind: do not treat closed patches outside station coverage as mapped geology, and switch back to the station overview if a contour shape is dominated by edge effects.

Profile View#

Profile View is the per-station response workbench. It starts with apparent resistivity and phase for the selected station and exposes tabs for pseudosections, tipper, phase tensor, a 2-D section, and a publication view.

Profile View on the ρₐ Section tab. Left: station selector, period range, component toggles, phase range, and error bars. Centre: the Z_XY (TE) and Z_YX (TM) apparent-resistivity pseudosections along the line.#

Tabs

Tab	Use it for
ρₐ / φ	Per-station apparent resistivity and phase response curves.
ρₐ Section	Along-line apparent-resistivity structure by period.
φ Section	Along-line phase structure by period.
Phase Tensor	Phase-tensor pseudosection for dimensionality and strike context.
Tipper	Tipper magnitude and direction where tipper data exist.
2D Section	Section-style view for profile- or inversion-oriented interpretation.
Publication	A cleaner, figure-oriented view for reports.

Left-hand controls

Station selector — step through stations with the arrows or pick one from the dropdown. The header shows the line, coordinates, elevation, frequency count, and tipper status.
Period range — limit the visible period (log10(T)) interval.
Components — toggle Zxy (TE), Zyx (TM), Zxx, and Zyy.
Phase range — automatic (data range) or a fixed interval.
Error bars — show uncertainty where available.

The default component set emphasises the off-diagonal Zxy and Zyx responses. Enable Zxx and Zyy when diagnosing diagonal leakage, distortion, or 3-D behaviour — if the diagonal components dominate, be cautious before assuming a simple 2-D interpretation.

Phase Tensor Pseudosection#

The Phase Tensor tab draws a station-by-period ellipse pseudosection, coloured by skew β. Use it before strike and dimensionality decisions.

The phase-tensor β pseudosection. Small skew β (a few degrees or less) suggests 1-D/2-D behaviour; strong or abrupt skew changes flag possible 3-D effects or local data problems.#

The same phase-tensor and strike diagnostics are also available on the Advanced Plots page for whole-survey, multi-line views.

3D Map#

The 3D Map page builds an interactive 3-D resistivity scene from the survey. It is a Results-group page, best used after the maps and profiles look credible.

Modes

Fence — vertical resistivity panels along each survey line, with controls for line spacing, azimuth offset, and panel thickness.
Block — a filled volume.
Slices — horizontal depth slices.

Additional panels control Annotations, Topography (draping the scene on station elevations), and Export. Load & Generate 3D builds the scene; after the first build, the controls update the view live. The scene is a Plotly 3-D figure — drag to rotate, scroll to zoom, and use the modebar camera for a PNG, or export an interactive HTML file from the Export panel.

Figure Export And Code Parity#

Every interactive figure on these pages is a Plotly figure with a modebar: use the camera button for a quick PNG, and the Export panels (on 3-D and the results pages) for PNG or standalone HTML. See Exports And Reproducibility for the full export story.

Because the web app shares controllers with the Python package, the same maps and 3-D scenes can be reproduced in code with the pycsamt.map façade, so a view you build interactively can be regenerated in a script for a report.

Common Issues#

No stations appear: Confirm that data loaded successfully and that the station list is populated. If it is empty, return to Loading Data And Sessions.
Stations plot in the wrong place: Check the Coordinate System panel in Map View. Standard EDI files are usually geographic latitude/longitude, but some project files use UTM or another EPSG code.
Profile tabs are empty: Select a station with valid impedance data and enough frequency samples. Some tabs — the tipper view in particular — require the corresponding data to exist in the loaded files.
Basemap tiles do not appear: Basemap tiles need optional geospatial dependencies and network access. The station and contour maps still work without tiles.

Next Steps#

Processing Pages – QC, correction, modelling, results, and agents.
Exports And Reproducibility – save maps, sections, and 3-D scenes.