Title
Workflow for analysis of compositional data in sedimentary petrology: Provenance changes in sedimentary basins from spatio-temporal variation in heavy-mineral assemblages
Author
Verhaegen, J.
Weltje, G.J.
Munsterman, D.K.
Publication year
2018
Abstract
The field of provenance analysis has seen a revival in the last decade as quantitative dataacquisition techniques continue to develop. In the 20th century, many heavy-mineral data were collected. These data were mostly used as qualitative indications for stratigraphy and provenance, and not incorporated in a quantitative provenance methodology. Even today, such data are mostly only used in classic data tables or cumulative heavy-mineral plots as a qualitative indication of variation. The main obstacle to rigorous statistical analysis is the compositional nature of these data which makes them unfit for standard multivariate statistics. To gain more information from legacy data, a straightforward workflow for quantitative analysis of compositional datasets is provided. First (1) a centred log-ratio transformation of the data is carried out to fix the constant-sum constraint and non-negativity of the compositional data. Next, (2) cluster analysis is followed by (3) principal component analysis and (4) bivariate log-ratio plots. Several (5) proxies for the effects of sorting and weathering are included to check the provenance significance of observed variations and finally a (6) spatial interpolation of a provenance proxy extracted from the dataset can be carried out. To test this methodology, available heavy-mineral data from the southern edge of the Miocene North Sea Basin are analysed. The results are compared with available information from literature and are used to gain improved insight into Miocene sediment input variations in the study area.
Subject
Geological Survey Netherlands
Geosciences
2015 Energy
Multivariate statistics
Data analysis
Palaeogeography
Miocene
Neogene
North Sea
Basin
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http://resolver.tudelft.nl/uuid:4f5db6f2-4e8b-4028-a745-8bb9c82a92a1
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1017/s0016756818000584
TNO identifier
838449
Source
Geology Magazine, 1-20
Document type
article