Cluster Analysis of Geophysical Fields in the Tectonic Zoning of the African–Antarctic Sector of the Southern Ocean

Tectonic zoning of the African–Antarctic sector of the Southern Ocean was carried out based on cluster analysis of a large volume of heterogeneous geophysical and geological data. It is known that the level of geological and geophysical exploration of this part of the ocean by marine surveys and drilling remains extremely low. The results of such an analysis make it possible, in areas with poor geophysical knowledge, to quickly draw up tectonic zoning schemes based on regional geophysical data freely available throughout the entire territory of the world ocean and use them as a basis for further interpretation. The following materials were used as the input data, or classification features: ocean floor topography, free-air and Bouguer gravity anomalies, the ΔTa anomalous magnetic field model, the age of the ocean floor, geoid height data, and the SL2013sv seismic tomography model. For clustering, the K-means algorithm and the Gaussian mixture method were used. Based on the results of applying these algorithms, cluster models of the study region were obtained, in which the selected classes fully reflect the main tectonic elements.