Craterstats
Craterstats 2.0
A revised program for plotting crater counts and determining surface ages. The software plots isochrons in cumulative, differential, R-plot and Hartmann presentations, and makes isochron fits to both cumulative and differential data. Hartmann-style piecewise production functions may also be used.
The software requires installation of the free IDL virtual machine (IDL 8.7 or newer versions), and runs on all common platforms.
• Join cratersoftware mailing list for occasional emails about updates to the software
• Craterstats slides from USGS Planetary Geologic Mappers Meeting 2012
• Browse older versions
Description of the techniques using in the software:
Neukum G., Meteorite bombardment and dating of planetary surfaces (English translation, 1984). Meteoritenbombardement und Datierung planetarer Oberflächen (German original) Habilitation Thesis for Faculty Membership, Univ. of Munich, 186pp, 1983.
The dating of resurfacing processes is covered in:
Michael G.G., Neukum G., Planetary surface dating from crater size-frequency distribution measurements: Partial resurfacing events and statistical age uncertainty, Earth and Planetary Science Letters, 294 (3-4), 223-229, 2010.
The possibility of analysing a crater population for the presence of non-random sub-populations which could bias a measurement is covered in:
Michael G.G., Platz T., Kneissl T., Schmedemann N., Planetary surface dating from crater size-frequency distribution measurements: spatial randomness and clustering, Icarus, 2012.
The technique for fitting isochrons to differential data (Hartmann-style), and a correction of the Werner & Tanaka (2010) Mars epoch boundaries are described in:
Michael G.G., Planetary surface dating from crater size–frequency distribution measurements: Multiple resurfacing episodes and differential isochron fitting, Icarus, 2013.
Many application examples for diverse types of unit are given in:
Platz T., Michael G. G., Tanaka K. L., Skinner J. A., Fortezzo C. M. Crater-based dating of geological units on Mars: Methods and application for the new global geological map, Icarus, 2013.