meltPT 1.0.1

Calculate pressures and temperatures of melting for basaltic rocks and fit with melting models.

meltPT

meltPT is a Python package for whole-rock major-element themormobarometric analyses of basaltic (mafic) rocks. It contains modules for:

• Correcting sample compositions for effects of olivine crystallisation
• Estimating pressures and temperatures at which samples were last in equilibrium with the mantle
• Estimating melt fractions and potential temperatures on an individual basis or for a suite of samples

Installation

Linux/Mac

To avoid incompatibility issues with other packages you may have installed, we recommend running meltPT in a virtual environment. Start a terminal and enter:

$ # Create virtual environment.
$ # Replace /path/to/virtual/environment with your desired path.
$ python3 -m venv /path/to/virtual/environment

$ # Activate new virtual environment.
$ source /path/to/virtual/environment/bin/activate

Note that, when using a virtual environment, some users may experience issues trying to display images created with matplotlib (e.g., in our tutorials): the default matplotlib backend is sometimes "agg", which cannot show figures. There does not seem to be a universal solution to this issue, so please see here for some options on how to proceed.

What you do next depends on whether you just want to use meltPT as is or if you want to edit the source code.

Basic Usage

If you just want to use meltPT as it is you can now simply type:

(meltpt) $ pip install meltPT

This will take a minute or two and print lots of stuff. If it completes successfully, you are now ready to use meltPT!

Development usage

If you want to edit meltPT's source code, you first need to download it. Navigate to your desired location and type:

(meltpt) $ git clone [e-mail]:fmcnab/meltPT.git

You should now have a directory called "meltPT". To install the package, enter this directory and run the setup script. Using the -e flag means that the code will be installed in "editable" mode, and changes you make locally will be incorporated without the need for a fresh install.

(meltpt) $ cd meltPT
(meltpt) $
(meltpt) $ # Standard install
(meltpt) $ pip install -e .
(meltpt) $
(meltpt) $ # Including extra dependencies - 
(meltpt) $ # required for those who wish to compile documentation locally.
(meltpt) $ pip install .[docs]
(meltpt) $ pip install -e .[docs] # (editable)

This will take a minute or two and print lots of stuff. If it completes successfully, you are now ready to use meltPT!

Windows

Unfortunately, we don't know much about using Python on a Windows system. But we plan to find out!

Using meltPT

Under ./Examples/Tutorials, you will find some exaple scripts to help you get started.

For more information, the meltPT ReadtheDocs page has full documentation for the codebase, a series of informative tutorials, information about contributing and our liscence.

Citing meltPT

If you use our code, please cite us. Currently each meltPT release is archived in our Zenodo repository:

• M^cNab, F. and Ball, P. W. (2022), meltPT, version 1.0.1, Zenodo, doi: 10.5281/zenodo.6948030.

Please be sure to include the version number of the code you used, so that others can reproduce your results. We are working on an accompanying publication which we hope will be available soon.

We also urge you to cite the original literature on which our code is based. The sample backtracking method is based on that of Lee et al. (2009, EPSL). For a list of themormobarometric schemes available in meltPT, and links to the original papers, see the
Thermobarometers section of our documentation.

If you use our melt-path fitting routines you should also cite:

• pyMelt: Matthews et al. (in rev., Volcanica)
• melting model for our examples: Katz et al. (2003, G-cubed)