ASTER LINEAMENTS, FAULTS, AND RESERVOIRS IN THE APPALACHIAN BASIN OF NEW YORK STATE

This study demonstrates that groundtruthed ASTER lineaments can be a powerful tool for gas exploration where fault systems are an important component in reservoir development. ASTER (Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer) is a high resolution sensor on the TERRA satellite that has high band sensitivity and spectral resolution, which makes it particularly sensitive to small wavelength changes. ASTER has one data point per 0.01 mm, which makes it an order of magnitude better spectral resolution than LandSat TM, which has one data point per 0.27 mm. ASTER also has a higher spatial resolution in the Visible and Near Infrared: 15 meters compared to LandSat's 30 meter resolution. This makes the ASTER sensor potentially more powerful than LandSat, the previous standard for lineament identification.

Scenes were analyzed in the Finger Lakes region of the Appalachian Basin (New York State) in regions of oil and gas interest and existing field data.  One scene is from the Keuka Lake region and two were acquired in the region between Seneca and Cayuga Lakes.  The Keuka Lake data were rectified and processed to maximize the visibility of lineaments.  Processing included the minimum noise fraction transform, principal component analysis, dark subtract, and spectral ratioing.  Considerable cloud cover resulted in a limited number of identifiable ASTER lineaments.  Lineaments that were identified coincide with faults, fracture intensification domains, and cross strike discontinuities (Everett et. al, 2002).  A few lineaments are coincident with generally E-striking structures that control the Trenton/Black River discovery field in NYS, the Glodes Corners Road Field.  In the LandSat data for the same area (EARTHSAT, 1997), no E-striking lineaments were identified.

The Seneca/Cayuga region was resized and enhanced with both a principal component analysis, dark subtract, and contrast stretching.  ASTER lineaments from the Seneca/Cayuga scenes correlate with topography as well as field data from the University at Buffalo Rock Fracture Group, where fracture intensification domains were identified using 9 attributes of each fracture.  LandSat lineaments in the same region also correlate with deep Trenton/Black River structures as well as shallow Alleghanian structures.