DZTOOLBOX.COM, A WEB APP FOR QUANTITATIVE DETRITAL GEOCHRONOLOGY ANALYSIS

As detrital zircon geochronology continues to gain popularity, there is an increased demand for quantitative tools that facilitate data interpretation. The past decade has brought several new quantitative tools to the forefront of the science, leading to innovative new ways to visualize and interpret detrital zircon data. However, many of these new advancements remain as stand-alone desktop programs, code, or spreadsheets; there is currently no web-based interface that incorporates a full suite of detrital zircon quantitative comparison methods in an accessible and user-friendly interface. To address this need, we designed a modern web application that provides free access to quantitative detrital zircon analysis tools. The new web application provides a simple, yet powerful work environment that incorporates a Python-based back-end and a Bootstrap-based HTML front-end. This expandable online platform currently includes quantitative comparison metrics for U-Pb age distributions, multidimensional scaling, and forward sediment mixture modeling. Quantitative comparison metrics include the likeness, similarity, KS, Kuiper, and cross-correlation tests found in DZstats. Users can also set up an account to save data and results of their online work. We demonstrate the utility of this new platform using a global data compilation of >600,000 individual ages as a stress test of the new platform. Results show that the online interface is capable of handling large amounts of data and data analysis. As development continues, we plan to implement standard methods for calculating maximum depositional age and more advanced applications such as non-negative matrix factorization, and methods for interpreting multivariate data such as geochronology paired with Hf isotopic analysis and trace element geochemistry. We see this contribution as complementing, rather than replacing, existing data interrogation tools such as IsoplotR and detritalPy.