PREPRINT Statistical Analysis of the Mariana Trench Geomorphology Using R Programming Language

This paper introduces an application of the R programming language environment for geostatistical data processing with a case study of the Mariana Trench, Pacific Ocean. Mariana trench is the deepest among all hadal oceanic depth trenches. Its formation is caused by the complex and diverse geomorphic factors impacting its development. The impact of these factors have been studies in this paper using R based statistical analysis and data visualization. Data included tectonic plates, bathymetric profiles, slope angles, aspect class, magmatism of igneous volcanic areas, sedimental thickness. The results consists in following achievements: (1) GIS cross-section profiles visualization; (2) estimated effects of the data distribution according to the tectonic plates crossing, slope degree, closeness of the igneous volcanic areas and depth; (3) geospatial comparative analysis of data distribution by four tectonic plates; (4) quantified similarities between the distributional data distances using correlation matrices, double Y-axis plotting and cluster analysis (k-mean method, dendrogram trees computing); (5) assessed dependence of the sedimental thickness on the profile morphology and slope angles by data grouping, ranking and sorting. The innovativeness of this paper consists in a cross-disciplinary approach combining methods of GIS, multi-source data collecting, statistical analysis, R programming, data visualization and geological analysis