An Empirical Study of R Applications for Data Analysis in Marine Geology

Abstract

The study focuses on the application of R programming language towards marine geological research with a case study of Mariana Trench. Due to its logical and straightforward syntax, multi–functional standard libraries, R is especially attractive to the geologists for the scientific computing. Using R libraries, the unevenness of various factors affecting Mariana Trench geomorphic structure has been studied. These include sediment thickness, slope steepness, angle aspect, depth at the basement and magmatism of the nearby areas. Methods includes using following R libraries: {ggplot2} for regression analysis, Kernel density curves, compositional charts; {ggalt} for Dumbbell charts for data comparison by tectonic plates, ranking dot plots for correlation analysis; {vcd} for mosaic plots, silhouette plots for compositional similarities among the bathymetric profiles, association plots; {car} for ANOVA. Bathymetric GIS data processing was done in QGIS and LaTeX. The innovativeness of the work consists in the multi–disciplinary approach combining GIS analysis and statistical methods of R which contributes towards studies of ocean trenches, aimed at geospatial analysis of big data.