DTSGUI: A Python Program to Process and Visualize Fiber‐Optic Distributed Temperature Sensing Data

Fiber-optic distributed temperature sensing (FO-DTS) has proven to be a transformative technology for the hydrologic sciences, with application to diverse problems including hyporheic exchange, groundwater/surface-water interaction, fractured-rock characterization, and cold-regions hydrology. FO-DTS produces large, complex, and information-rich datasets. Despite the potential of FO-DTS, adoption of the technology has been impeded by lack of tools for data processing, analysis, and visualization. New tools are needed to efficiently and fully capitalize on the information content of FO-DTS datasets. To this end, we present DTSGUI (Distributed Temperature Sensing Graphical User Interface), a public-domain Python-based software package for editing, parsing, processing, statistical analysis, georeferencing, and visualization of FO-DTS data.

Impact/Purpose

This work addresses the visualization and processing of water based temperature measurements acquired from fiber-optic distributed temperature systems (FOTDS). FOTDS are utilized to understand groundwater – surface water interactions. Such measurements are important to understand potential groundwater impacts to surface water systems and/or surface water impacts to groundwater. This paper presents easy to use and applicable software for processing and visualizing such data. The software has long term applicability throughout the lifespan of an investigation. Practitioners of FOTDS will find this software useful for data processing and visualization. This work furthers the agency’s goals to protect human health and the environment by guiding decision makers, stakeholders, and other interested parties through understanding the relationship of temperature data and subsurface fluid flow.

Citation

Domanski, M., D. Quinn, F. Day-Lewis, M. Briggs, D Werkema, AND J. Lane Jr. DTSGUI: A Python Program to Process and Visualize Fiber‐Optic Distributed Temperature Sensing Data. Wiley-Blackwell, Hoboken, NJ, 58(5):799-804, (2020). [DOI: 10.1111/gwat.12974]

DOI: DTSGUI: A Python Program to Process and Visualize Fiber‐Optic Distributed Temperature Sensing Data