A Study and Implications on the Potential of Satellite Image Spectral to Assess the Iron Ore Grades of Noamundi Iron Deposits Area

Jharkhand is well known for the largest iron deposits in India. Noamundi is the main deposit, which is associated with shale, keolinite. The rock succession exposed in the southern Singbhum and Keonjhar and lying unconformably over the older metamorphics are known as Iron Ore Series (Ravindrakumar, 1986). This paper relates the assessment of grades of iron ore of the area. The study involves with pre-processing, FLAASH (Fast Line-of-Sight Atmospheric Analysis of Spectral Hypercubes) Atmospheric correction algorithms of EO-1 Hyperion data and evaluating the spectral characteristic by using ENVI 4.7 software package. The position of peak reflectance and absorption trough, continuums removal and absorption band depth are considered for assessment the spectral characters. The strong absorption observed is between the 860 to 900nm wavelength region and peak reflectance is observed in the 750 to 780nm wavelength region of the image spectra. The position of the NIR absorption trough shift to the direction of the longer wavelengths is due to decrease of iron content. Higher values of band depth indicate a better possibility of the iron occurrence. As a result, this spectral study enables the possibility to differentiate the grades of iron ores from hyperspectral satellite images.