GPlates is desktop software for the interactive visualisation of plate tectonics.
GPlates offers a novel combination of interactive plate tectonic reconstructions, geographic information system (GIS) functionality and raster data visualisation. GPlates enables both the visualisation and the manipulation of plate tectonic reconstructions and associated data through geological time. GPlates runs on Windows, Linux and macOS. GPlates has an online user manual.
GPlates and pyGPlates are both free software (also known as open-source software), licensed for distribution under the GNU General Public License (GPL), version 2.
GPlately is a Python package which enables the reconstruction of data through deep geological time (points, lines, polygons, and rasters), the interrogation of plate kinematic information (plate velocities, rates of subduction and seafloor spreading), the rapid comparison between multiple plate motion models, and the plotting of reconstructed output data on maps.
GPlates is developed by an international team of scientists and professional software developers at:
the EarthByte group in the school of Geosciences at the University of Sydney
with past contributions from:
the Division of Geological and Planetary Sciences (GPS) at Caltech
the Centre for Earth Evolution and Dynamics (CEED) at the Department of Geosciences, University of Oslo, Norway
the Geodynamics Team at the Geological Survey of Norway (NGU).