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i am using arcgis 10.1

i want to calculate the shortest distance between a raster and another raster. i have a bathymetric raster and an underlying fault plane raster. for each bathy raster cell, i need to know the shortest distance to the underlying fault plane.

the bathymetry and the fault plane rasters are not planar nor horizontally level.

i am not trained in python and hope there is an existing tool that i could use (though i could learn python if i need to).

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The reference to "not...level" suggests you do not want to use Euclidean distance on the map. What distance do you want to use? Also, does "underlying" mean something special (what?) or do you just want to find the shortest distance between each bathymetry cell and the nearest fault plane? – whuber♦ Jan 24 at 19:12
i want to know the shortest distance between each raster cell of the bathymetry data set and the underlying subduction zone fault plane. the subduction zone fault plane is not planar and dips ("not level") at angles between 10 and 45 degrees beneath the bathymetry data. there is only one fault plane i am interested in determining this distance. because the fault is dipping at an angle, the nearest distance from any location on the sea floor is not the measurement vertically down to the fault plane, but at some angle from the vertical axis. this can be done in autocad, but i don't have it. – cascadia GIS Jan 24 at 22:14
here is a map showing part of the area i am working on. the map shows deeper bathymetry as darker blue. the fault where it meets the sea floor is the orange line. the fault dips beneath the seafloor in the direction of the orange arrow. [link]earthjay.com/sumatra/maps/gis_fault_example_20130124.pdf – cascadia GIS Jan 24 at 22:25
here is an oblique view of a subduction zone. one can see that the shortest distance between the seafloor above the fault and the fault is not measured along a vertical axis. [link]earthjay.com/sumatra/NHESS_paper_20121023/… – cascadia GIS Jan 24 at 22:29
here is an illustration showing the relations between the bathymetry and the underlying fault... earthjay.com/sumatra/maps/distance_to_fault.pdf – cascadia GIS Jan 24 at 22:37

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