Characteristics of Geological Lineaments Along the Eastern Coast of the Korean Peninsula: A Statistical Approach

Abstract

Kim, T.; Kim, Y.-S., and Lee, H.-J., 2020. Characteristics of geological lineaments along the eastern coast of the Korean Peninsula: A statistical approach. In: Jung, H.-S.; Lee, S.; Ryu, J.-H., and Cui, T. (eds.), Advances in Geospatial Research of Coastal Environments. Journal of Coastal Research, Special Issue No. 102, pp. 88-100. Coconut Creek (Florida), ISSN 0749-0208.Lineament analysis is an essential method for evaluation of site safety in important facilities such as nuclear power plant and nuclear waste disposal site. However, in the case of coastal areas, if the same criteria used for inland is applied, large-scale lineament could be underestimated. Therefore, a different classification criterion is necessary to evaluate the characteristics of lineament pattern along coastal areas. Thus, here, a new statistical method focusing on zonal analysis is proposed. This method is applied for evaluating the characteristics of lineaments developed within 5 km from the eastern coastline of the Korean Peninsula. The most dominant direction of lineaments along the eastern coast lies in the N–S direction, followed by the NE–SW, and the E–W directions. Since the length distribution of the lineament shows the characteristics of the lognormal distribution, statistical analysis was performed using probability density functions (PDFs). The results indicate that the mode value of the lineament length is about 2 km, and lineaments shorter than 6 km account for 90 % of the total. To confirm the validity of the statistical distribution features, re-analyzing the study area by progressively increasing its width to 10 km, 15 km, 20 km, and 30 km was done. The analysis showed that the distribution characteristics were similar to those of the area with a width of 5 km. The statistical analysis using PDFs improved the existing classification criteria based on lineament length and provided three new quantitative classes of lineaments within coastal regions.