East Azarbaijan belongs to the Iranian plateau and is part of lesser Caucasus province. Studied area is located in west-central Alborz. The intrusion of oligocene bodies in various units causes the alteration and mineralization in northwest of Iran. The Hizejan-Sharafabad is one of this named mineralized zone. Granitoidicrocks with component of Granodiorite to alkali have been influenced by hydrothermal fluids. Fractures and faults are as weak zone in earth surface and hydrothermal fluids rise to surface by these geological structures. These solutions cause to alteration in host rocks. Alteration zones are important features for the exploration of deposits. The altered rocks have specific absorption in some spectral portion and ASTER sensor is able to identify the type of alteration. Remote sensing method is useful tool for discovering altered area. The purpose of this study is to appraise ASTER data for surveying altered minerals in Hizejan-Sharafabad area in the event of detecting the potential mineralized areas. In this research, False Color Composite (FCC), Band ratio, and color composite ratio techniques are applied on ASTER data and Silica, Argilic, and Propylitic alteration zones are detected. These alteration types and mineralized area are related to Hizejan–Sharafabad fault which is absent in the fault maps. ASAR image processing has been used for lineaments and faults identified by the aid of Directional and Canny Algorithm filters. The structural study focuses on fracture zones and their characteristics including strike, length, and relationship with alteration zones.
This research is done with the aim of identification of altered zones associated with lineament patterns. The term “Lineament” is a commonly used term in geological remote sensing. The classification of lineaments, its direction and length can be easily specified by using satellite images. The automatic lineaments extraction in this research is performed by the directional filter of ENVI and Canny Algorithm in MATLAB software.
The area is within zone 38S of Universal Transverse Mercator coordinate system. The upper left and lower right coordinates of the study area are 4292744N, 610192E and 4260783N, 634422E, respectively. The total area covered is about 350 km2.
The study area is situated in north-west part of Alborz, Iran (
neotectonic regime in Iran [
The several types of software used for this research include: ENVI v5.1, Rockwork v16, ILWIS3.31 academic, MATLAB, and ARCGIS v10.3 were mainly used for processing and analysis of multi-spectral and single band images. ArcGIS v10.3 was used to georeference, digitize and capture various maps in a database.
Radar is an active form of remote sensing that provides its own source of electromagnetic energy to illuminate the terrain. Radar energy is measured in wavelengths of centimeters that penetrate rain and clouds which is an advantage in tropical regions. Another advantage is that radar images may be acquired at a low depression angle that causes pronounced highlights and shadows that enhance subtle topographic features. These features are commonly the expression of faults, fractures, and lithology. Radar images of vegetated regions record the vegetation surface, rather than the underlying terrain. Satellite image of the area is the main data used in this study.
Considering spatial resolution of the available satellite images and the size of the study area, ASAR (Advanced Synthetic Aperture Radar), C-Band imagery (ASAR-IMP-IPN UPA), the data acquired on 06 07 2006 is select for this study. Lineament mapping is considered as a very important issue in different disciplines to solve certain problems in the area. For example, in sites election for construction a dams, bridges, roads, etc., for mineral exploration [
The automatic lineament extraction in this study is performed by the directional filter and Canny Algorithm of ENVI v5.1, Rockwork v16, ILWIS3.31 academic, MATLAB, and ARCGIS v10.3 software respectively. The image enhancement is one of the useful tools to improve the interpretability. One of those enhancements is edgesharpening enhancement technique for enhancing the edges in an image. Directional filters (edge detection filters) are designed to enhanced linear features such as roads, streams, faults, etc. the filters can be designed to enhance features which are oriented in specific directions. Directional filter is applied to the ASAR image in N-S, E-W, NE-SW, and NW-SE directions to increase frequency and contrast in the image. The filtering operation will sharpen the boundary that exists between neighbor units [
The best results were obtained for single band using the following matrix (Figures 2-6).
A remotely sensed lineaments map (
The precision of lineament map is calculated by using ArcGIS overlay technique that determines where the lineaments and faults are matched. The output of these operation product two types of lines.
1) Non-matching lineaments: these are the lineaments that do not match to any fault line (shown as black lines in the figure and these lineaments are newest lineaments that identified by ASAR imagery).
2) Matching lineaments and fault lines: these are the segments in yellow both lineaments and faults exist.
Lineaments have important role in initial exploration of geologic structure, mineral exploration. This work, canny algorithm with different kernel windows size is a main component and new geomatical tool for lineament extraction. In this section, automatic detection algorithm such as Canny is performed to acquire excellent accuracy of lineament extraction. Prior to implementations of automatic edge detection processing, ASAR data is enhanced and then geometrically corrected and in second step, manual digitizing of lineaments are visualized after performing appropriate image enhancement tool.
The Canny edge detector is an edge detection operator that uses a multi-stage algorithm to detect lineaments features in images. It was developed by John F. Canny in 1986. Canny also produced a computational theory of edge detection explaining why the technique works. Indicative result of the application of the selected algorithm is illustrated in
ASTER (Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer) is an advanced multi-spectral satellite imaging system, which was launched on February 11, 2013 by NASA. It measures reflected radiation in VNIR (0.52 and 0.86 μm), SWIR (11.6 to 2.43 μm), and emitted radiation in TIR wavelength region (8.125 to 11.65 μm) with 3, 6, 5 bands and 15 m, 30 m, 90 m resolution, respectively [
Based on the spectral properties of typical alteration mineral and geological background, four image processing techniques were selected to recognize different alteration minerals, including Band ratio, colorcomposite, and colorcomposite ratio. Hydrothermal ore deposits are created by the activity of fertile fluids that are rich in metals. Remote sensing used in mineral exploration of hydrothermal ore deposits often use the spectral
features of thealteration minerals at wavelength of 2.0 to 2.5 μm to find alteration zones and identify alteration minerals. Features of ASTER image is shown in
The human eye is capable of discriminating about 30 grey levels in the black to white range [
For any band of multispectral image, the interpreter can placement a display color and it be done in freewill ways. In the displayed image, the color of an object dose not has any similarity to its true color and is known as a FCC image. There are various methods to producing FCC image and some of these methods can be more appropriate for identifying sharp objects in the produced image. In the order to identify hydrothermal alteration zones and alteration minerals in different altered rocks, kind of FCC of multispectral image were used. Generally, granite units and mafic to ulteramafic intrusive bodies are important targets for exploration because they are caused to alteration. Because of high resolution of VNIR region, created false color of this region provide more structural features. To identification of alteration units, by applying bands 468 (in SWIR region of RGB Respectively) and created false color image alteration zones appear as specified colors. Advanced argillic alteration (alunite, kaolinite) and phyllic alteration (sericite, smectite) are indicated in red to pink, propylitic alteration (chlorite, epidote) is indicated in pale green and calcareous units are indicated in yellow. Advanced argillic and phyllic alteration appear as red to pink. Propylite alteration chlorite or epidote, appear as palegreen and Carbonate rocks appears as yellow as distinct features identifiable without error (
TIR region contain spectral emissivity and temperature information and are useful for identifying silicate rocks because of its spectral emissivity features due to the lattice vibration of Si-O. By assigning of TIR region (14, 12, and 10 = RGB respectively) helpful to identify mafic to ulteramafic rocks and silica rich felsic rocks (
Rocks and minerals have specific absorption and reflectance in some spectral portion. Band ratioing is the very useful technique in the Remote Sensing for detection of altered rocks and minerals. Different authors [
Propylitic alteration contains chlorite, epidote, and altered minerals. These minerals have absorption at band 8
Subsystem | Band No. | Spectral Range (µm) | Radiometric Resolution | Absolute Accuracy (σ) | Spatial Resolution | Signal Quantization Levels |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
VNIR | 1 2 3N 3B | 0.52 - 0.60 0.63 - 0.69 0.78 - 0.86 0.78 - 0.86 | NE∆ρ ≤ 0.5% | ≤±4% | 15 m | 8 bits |
SWIR | 4 5 6 7 8 9 | 1.600 - 1.700 2.145 - 2.185 2.185 - 2.225 2.235 - 2.285 2.295 - 2.365 2.360 - 2.430 | NE∆ρ ≤ 0.5% NE∆ρ ≤ 1.3% NE∆ρ ≤ 1.3% NE∆ρ ≤ 1.3% NE∆ρ ≤ 1.0% NE∆ρ ≤ 1.3% | ≤±4% | 30 m | 8 bits |
TIR | 10 11 12 13 14 | 8.125 - 8.475 8.475 - 8.825 8.925 - 9.275 10.25 - 10.95 1.95 - 11.65 | NE∆T ≤ 0.3 K | ≤3K (200 - 240 K) ≤2K (240 - 270 K) ≤1K (270 - 340 K) ≤2K (340 - 370 K) | 90 m | 12 bits |
and for identification can be enhanced by band ratio b5/b8 (
To identify quartz [
Color composite ratio images are produced by combining three ratio images in blue, green, and red. According to
For mapping alteration zones [
Advanced argillic alteration, phyllic alteration, propylitic alteration and calcite can be identified by the color composite image of band ratios by applying advanced argillic alteration to red, phyllic alteration to green and propylitic alteration to blue (B4/B6: B5/B6: B5/B8) (
This research presented an investigation into integration satellite Remote Sensing and ArcGIS techniques for detecting lineaments that might be related to faults and mineralization zones. To achieve these goals we used ASTER and RADAR (ASAR) imagery as following.
At the first step, an RADAR (ASAR) single-band image has been processed for lineaments identification; at the second step, ASTER multi-spectral images have been applications mainly related to mapping rock types and identified alteration zones; and at the end step, relationship between lineaments and alteration zones has been investigated.
The results show that directional filter provides highly precisely lineaments information compared to canny algorithm. Also, integration between Canny algorithm and directional filter can be used as an excellent tool to understand variation of lineament density. The spectral attributes of hydrothermally altered rocks provide a basis for mapping the alteration minerals using ASTER VNIR + SWIR + TIR data, and also ASAR data improves the accuracy of analyzing geological structures specially lineament identification. Band ratio, color composite, and
color composite ratio are selected for detailed alteration minerals mapping and Silica, Argilic, and Propylitic alteration zones are detected. The four methods have high-level of similarity in the mapping results presented by recent authors. Evaluation of the density and orientation of the lineaments (NW-SE) indicates that several fault segments are identified in the region which are absent in the fault map due the difficulty in mapping during the field studies. In Hizejan-Sharafabad area, fractures and crushed zone act as a weak zone to up heave of hydrothermal solution into the rocks and cause to alteration and mineralization in host rocks. It is concluded that the proposed methods can be used as a powerful tool for ore deposit exploration; ASTER images can be employed for mineral characterization; and ASAR data can be employed for lineaments identification. In conclusion, we have shown that identification of hydrothermal alteration zones over wide area is possible and detailed information on alteration for the purposes of exploration of mineralized zones can be obtained using the proposed ASTER image creation methods.
This study was conducted as a part of PhD degree granted by Islamic Azad University, North Tehran Branch.
Shabnam Khosroshahizadeh,Mohsen Pourkermani,Mahmood Almasian,Mehran Arian,Ahmad Khakzad, (2016) Lineament Patterns and Mineralization Related to Alteration Zone by Using ASAR-ASTER Imagery in Hize Jan-Sharaf Abad Au-Ag Epithermal Mineralized Zone (East Azarbaijan—NW Iran). Open Journal of Geology,06,232-250. doi: 10.4236/ojg.2016.64021