Mapping copper mineralization using EO-1 Hyperion data fusion with Landsat 8 OLI and Sentinel-2A in Moroccan Anti-Atlas

Abstract

In Morocco, the oriental Anti-Atlas encompasses many valuable deposits, including that of copper (Cu) which is located in the Sidi Flah-Bouskour inlier. This deposit is known for its high importance on the national scale. The present work aims to compare the Hyperion raw and fused data for mapping Cu mineralization. After applying the pre-processing steps on the images used, the fusion (hyperspectral/multispectral) process was done using the colour normalized spectral sharpening method. Subsequently, the mineralogical mapping task was performed using the mixture tuned matched filtering and the independent component analysis methods. In the last step, a geophysical data, a field survey and spectroradiometric measurements were done for checking and validating the results obtained. The analysis showed a high performance of the fused images for mineralogical mapping. Consequently, the methodology proposed can be exploited in mineralogical mapping, and also in other remote sensing works.

Keywords:

• Remote sensing
• copper mineralization
• hyperspectral/multispectral fusion

Acknowledgements

The authors thank MANAGEM group for their collaboration and his help during the field survey. The thanks are also addressed to the Sultan Moulay Slimane University for providing logistical facilities for the field survey. In addition, we gratefully acknowledge the CNRST (National Center for Scientific Technical Research) for his financial support, as well as the ONHYM (Office National des Hydrocarbures et des Mines) for providing us the ASD Spectroradiometer. We thank also the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) and the European Space Agency (ESA) for providing the remote sensing data. The authors thank the reviewers for their helpful comments and suggestions.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.