VALIDATION OF PREVIOUSLY-MAPPED LINEAMENTS IN AND NEAR PART OF THE NEW MADRID SEISMIC ZONE, ARKANSAS, MISSOURI AND TENNESSEE WITH FREE DATA FROM GLOBAL IMAGE ARCHIVES

Key locations along the Bootheel lineament in Arkansas and Missouri and 192 of 278 previously-mapped lineaments in western Tennessee are visible on free Landsat 7 images downloaded through a web site under development by the NASA Earth Observing System Higher Education Alliance (“GeoBrain”). Western Tennessee lineaments range in length from 200 m to 20.4 km and are developed within a generally-flat (3 degree average slope) 8,677 sq. km area covered predominantly by cropland and pasture (63%) and forest (29%). Landsat images are viewed as a color composite with band 4 (0.75-0.90 microns) as red, band 3 (0.63-0.69 microns) as green and band 2 (0.525-0.605 microns) as blue and a composite with band 7 (2.09-2.35 microns) as red, band 4 as green and band 2 as blue. Concentrations of sand blows on the southeast side of the Bootheel lineament are particularly conspicuous on the former composite. Although 86 previously-mapped western Tennessee lineaments are not readily apparent on the composites, many of these lineaments are visible on elevation, slope, aspect and shaded relief images derived from free Shuttle Radar Topography Mapping (SRTM) data downloaded through the U.S. Geological Survey Seamless Data Distribution System. As demonstrated by the preceding examples, free data from global Landsat and digital elevation archives can validate many previously-mapped lineaments on a cultivated plain.