A circum-Arctic zircon uranium-lead age database

Understanding how and when the Amerasia Basin opened has significant implications for the geological histories and petroleum systems of sedimentary basins within the circum?Arctic region. Uranium?lead detrital zircon geochronology, employed alone or in conjunction with Lu-Hf isotopes, is a widely employed tool for reconstructing sedimentary provenance. It can provide insights into the opening of the Amerasia Basin by constraining the pre?rift configuration of Arctic tectonic terranes and sediment transportation pathways.

Despite being comparatively remote, a large volume of published U-Pb age data exists from the onshore margins and offshore continental shelves of the Arctic Ocean. Rigorous comparison of these data is, however, seldom straightforward and often requires recalculation of data against a common set of parameters and criteria; for example, using the same U-Pb age system and employing thresholds on analytical precision and U-Pb age discordance.

To address some of these problems, a standardised dataset of published zircon U-Pb ages and Lu-Hf isotope data from the circum?Arctic region is being developed as a geographical information system (GIS) database using ArcGIS®. Custom database tools have been developed within ArcGIS® using Microsoft Visual Studio®. These facilitate the searching of the database and visualisation of U-Pb age and Lu-Hf isotope data within the GIS environment. Furthermore, similarity measures, using multidimensional scaling, are being developed to enable data to be compared with statistical rigour.