Deciphering absolute plate motions involves the study of hotspot trails. Traditionally, the backtracking technique is used to rotate seamounts of known age back to their presumed origin (a hotspot). On the other hand, the hotspotting technique uses instead the flowlines associated with the seafloor beneath each volcano to create a grid of Cumulative Volcano Amplitudes (CVA) map given a set of stage pole rotations. Local CVA maxima may be associated with hotspot locations. The two methods are complementary. The SPOTTER package provides tools to investigate both methods:

1. backtracker will calculate forward or backward hotspot tracks or flowlines, or simply just return the final position for each data point.
2. hotspotter will read a database of seamounts and a set of stage (Euler) poles and create a CVA grid in GMT format.
3. originator will attempt to associate seamounts with hotspot point sources.

SPOTTER is organized as a GMT supplemental package and requires GMT to be installed first. It is then trivial to install SPOTTER since it uses the same libraries and make options as GMT. Starting with GMT 3.3.1, SPOTTER was included in the GMT supplemental archive.

Hotspotting References

1. Wessel, P. 1999, New Hotspotting tools released, EOS Trans. AGU, 80 (29), p 319.
2. Wessel, P., and L. W. Kroenke, 1997, A geometric technique for relocating hotspots and refining absolute plate motions, Nature, 387, 365-369.
3. Wessel, P., and L. W. Kroenke, 1998, The geometric relationship between hot spots and seamounts: implications for Pacific hot spots, Earth Planet. Sci. Lett., 158, 1-18.
4. Wessel, P., and L. W. Kroenke, 1998, Factors influencing the locations of hot spots determined by the hot-spotting technique, Geophys. Res. Lett., 25, 55-58.
5. Aslanian, D., L. Geli, and J.-L. Olivet, 1998, Hotspotting called into question, Nature, 396, 127.
6. Wessel, P., and L. W. Kroenke, 1998, Hotspotting called into question - Reply, Nature, 396, 127-128.

References to Pacific seamount data set

1. Wessel, P., and S. Lyons, 1997, Distribution of large Pacific seamounts from Geosat/ERS-1: Implications for the history of intraplate volcanism, J. Geophys. Res., 102, 22,459-22,475.
2. Wessel, P., 1997, Sizes and ages of seamounts using remote sensing: Implications for intraplate volcanism, Science, 277, 802-805.

Availability of SPOTTER code

Availability of Pacific seamount data set

Wessel & Lyons seamount data.

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