Mineral and lithological mapping using thermal infrared remotely sensed data from ASTER simulator

This study presents the results of othe authors´ investigation into the application of the thermal infrared sensor of ASTER for mapping lithology and mineralogy. High-spectral resolution airborne and ground surveys were carried out over the Goldfield district in southwestern Nevada. The airborne survey was flown with an aircraft-based simulator of ASTER. The radiance data acquired in the ASTER simulator was strongly affected by atmospheric effects and temperature of the target material. The authors applied HLS contrast stretch, thermal logarithmic residual and α residual to extract emissivity information from aircraft data. The results from these data processing provided emissivity-dependent features of the surface material, which were useful to separate each geological unit