Airborne hyperspectral data for mineral mapping in Southeastern Rajasthan, India

Geology majorly deals with the structures, features, minerals, rocks, etc. of the planet Earth. Geologists are using the technology of remote sensing for structural interpretation and regional mapping. Ores and minerals identification are also done with the help of remote sensing. This paper is mainly focused on the identification of minerals and mapping with the help of various algorithms such as Spectral Angle Mapper (SAM), Spectral Feature Fitting (SFF) and Mixture Tuned Matched Filtering (MTMF) using airborne hyperspectral data. Minerals are identified on the basis of the visible and near-infrared spectral reflectance. Spectral reflectance is having absorption features at different positions and absorption peaks are used for the analysis of imagery. This technique provides surface mineralogical details. SAM algorithm mainly computes the angle between the unknown pixel spectrum and unique pixel spectrum. SFF algorithm matched the continuum removed the spectrum of the imagery pixel from the continuum removed reference spectra. MTMF algorithm detects the abundance of the minerals and removes the erroneous positive. Total 13 endmembers (minerals) were identified in the study area. These minerals are grouped into clay minerals, iron minerals, carbonate minerals, and other minerals. These endmembers are used for the mineral map creation from different algorithms. Algorithms produce the diverse kind of mineral map and these are compared with each other on the basis of the mineralogy and discrimination of mineralized region from settlements. Mineral map produced by MTMF algorithm provides convenient results with better accuracy than other algorithms.