Articles | Volume 5, issue 1
https://doi.org/10.5194/gchron-5-263-2023
© Author(s) 2023. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
https://doi.org/10.5194/gchron-5-263-2023
© Author(s) 2023. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
Short communication/technical note
| 
17 May 2023
Short communication/technical note |
| 17 May 2023
| 17 May 2023
Short communication: The Wasserstein distance as a dissimilarity metric for comparing detrital age spectra and other geological distributions
Merton College, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK
Pieter Vermeesch
Department of Earth Sciences, University College London, London, UK
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Total article views: 1,914 (including HTML, PDF, and XML)
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Total article views: 287 (including HTML, PDF, and XML)
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18 citations as recorded by crossref.
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- Orogenic unroofing of the Taltson and Thelon orogens depicted through detrital zircon geochronology of the Sosan Group, Great Slave Lake Supergroup (Northwest Territories, Canada) J. Lockie et al. 10.1016/j.precamres.2025.107706
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- Pyroxene-rich Orange sand highway from basaltic highlands to the ocean: Modern sediment-routing system of an Early Jurassic river E. Garzanti et al. 10.1016/j.geogeo.2024.100311
- The Distance Between: An Algorithmic Approach to Comparing Stochastic Models to Time-Series Data B. Sherlock et al. 10.1007/s11538-024-01331-y
- Towards Inverse Modeling of Landscapes Using the Wasserstein Distance M. Morris et al. 10.1029/2023GL103880
- Controls on zircon age distributions in volcanic, porphyry and plutonic rocks C. Nathwani et al. 10.5194/gchron-7-15-2025
- Discordance dating: A new approach for dating alteration events J. Reimink et al. 10.5194/gchron-7-369-2025
- Measurement and Comparison of Distributional Shift with Applications to Ecology, Economics, and Image Analysis K. Locey & B. Stein 10.1007/s42519-025-00475-x
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Latest update: 28 Aug 2025
Short summary
We propose using the Wasserstein-2 distance (W2) as an alternative to the widely used Kolmogorov–Smirnov (KS) statistic for analysing distributional data in geochronology. W2 measures the horizontal distance between observations, while KS measures vertical differences in cumulative distributions. Using case studies, we find that W2 is preferable in scenarios where the absolute age differences in observations provide important geological information. W2 has been added to the R package IsoplotR.
We propose using the Wasserstein-2 distance (W2) as an alternative to the widely used...
