Volcanic edifice alignment detection software in MATLAB: Test data and preliminary results for shield fields on Venus

The scarcity of impact craters on Venus make it difficult to infer the relative ages of geologic units. Stratigraphic methods can be used to help infer the relative ordering of surface features, but the relatively coarse resolution of available radar data means ambiguity about the timing of certain features is common. Here we develop a set of statistical tools in MATLAB to help infer the relative timing between clusters of small shield volcanoes and sets of fractures in the surrounding terrain. Specifically, we employed two variants of the two-point azimuth method to detect anisotropy in the distribution of point like features. The results of these methods are shown to successfully identify anisotropy at two spatial scales: at the whole-field level and at scales smaller than a set fraction of the mean value. Initial results on the test cases presented here are promising, at least for volcanic fields emplaced under uniform conditions. These methods could also be used for detecting anisotropy in other point-like geologic features, such as hydrothermal vents, springs, and earthquake epicenters. (C) 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.