Trends in the broad chemical composition of carbonates: A study of the selected carbonate sequences using discriminant analsyis

Abstract

Basic processes of carbonate sedimentation result in certain predictable facies frame-work that recur in a variety of tectonic settings and reconstruction of the same can be made with the use of petrographic and geochemical data, In the present paper, three different carbonate groups viz., Precambrian, Jurassic and Pleistocene have been analyzed for their characterization and classification. Similar trends in the broad chemical components have been observed in all the three groups. Multivariate Discriminant Analysis of these carbonate groups provided a clear separation between these three different groups with about 90 percent samples correctly grouped into respective categories. The predictions are better for Younger (Pleistocene) group (Group 3) than either of the other groups (Precambrian and Jurassic) and emphasize the separation between the younger and older.