STUDIES OF FAULTING IN THE RIO GRANDE RIFT REGION OF WEST TEXAS EMPLOYING DATA FUSION OF AIRSAR/TOPSAR, TM AND GRAVITY DATA

The nature and extent of the Rio Grande rift in West Texas remains a subject of some debate. However, there is definite evidence of recent tectonic activity in the form of fault scarps and sizeable historical earthquakes. In order to evaluate these features, we have used a variety of remote sensing and geophysical data to investigate exposed faults and basin structures. Data fusion is an important image processing technology. For example, we used the color transform, which can be used to merge two data sets of different resolutions by replacing the value (or brightness) band of a HSV (Hue, Saturation and Value) image with a coregistered higher resolution image, or different type of image. In this study, we use data fusion to: A). combine a low resolution multi-spectral image with a high resolution panchromatic image of the same area in order to increase the spatial resolution. Specifically, we combined 30 m resolution images of the Landsat 7 (ETM) with its 15 m panchromatic image into a new image with 15 m spatial resolution; B). combine two different types of images such as AVHRR (depicts sea surface temperature) and radar (gives the roughness and texture of the sea surface) in order to produce a new image that can detect relationships between temperature and roughness. We combined AIRSAR/TOPSAR radar images (10 m) with the fused TM image (15 m), and produced a very informative and interpretable image with both colorful multi-spectral features and detailed textural and structure information and even some subsurface information; C). combine geophysical data (image) such as Bouguer gravity anomalies and geological information with the above images to provide new information, particularly about deeply buried features. This approach has been applied in both the El Paso and Valentine, Texas area and provides significant new information about the fault scarps present and their relationships to deep basin structure. In particular, young faults do not necessarily correlate directly with large, basin-bounding structures.