pymaxspots: Computing and connecting horizontal gradient maxima in potential-field geophysics
August 8, 2025
"Max spots" or "maxspots" refers to the locations of the local maxima of the horizontal gradient of potential fields such as gravity or magnetic anomalies. Because maxspots mark locations of abrupt change in the anomalies, they can be used to identify the edges of subsurface features with significant contrasts in density and/or magnetization, such as faults, intrusions, or lithologic contacts. pymaxspots is a Python package that finds the maxspots of a raster image of the horizontal gradient magnitude (HGM) of potential field anomalies. It also can connect the maxspots into continuous line features and return the resulting line features as a list of interconnected points.
Citation Information
| Publication Year | 2025 |
|---|---|
| Title | pymaxspots: Computing and connecting horizontal gradient maxima in potential-field geophysics |
| DOI | 10.5066/P13FSKEM |
| Authors | Collin Cronkite-Ratcliff, Noah Athens |
| Product Type | Software Release |
| Record Source | USGS Asset Identifier Service (AIS) |
| USGS Organization | Geology, Minerals, Energy, and Geophysics Science Center |
| Rights | This work is marked with CC0 1.0 Universal |
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