SPECTRAL ANALYSIS OF ADVANCED SPACEBOURNE THERMAL EMISSION RADIOMETER (ASTER) DATA FOR MINERAL EXPLORATION OF THE WAH WAH MOUNTAINS, UTAH

Multispectral analysis of Advanced Spacebourne Thermal Emission Radiometer (ASTER) remote sensing data has been successfully used for locating hydrothermal and mineral deposits in the southern Great Basin regions of Nevada and eastern California. ASTER data contains visible, near- infrared, shortwave infrared and thermal bands that can be used to discriminate between rock and mineral types and has large regional scene coverage of 120 by 150 km. Multispectral analysis for locating lithologies that host mineral deposits is an underexplored technique in the northern Great Basin region of Utah and southern Idaho. However, the same techniques used in southern Great Basin can be applied to the north, as both regions reside in an arid, extensional tectonic environment and contain hydrothermal deposits. The Wah Wah Mountains in southwestern Utah will be the focus of this study as they as they host hydrothermally altered Cenozoic age topaz-rhyolites that contain minerals such as Fe-Mn beryl (informally known as red emerald), titanite, garnet and magnetite. This area has been mined for Fe-Mn beryl in the past; however, no ASTER spectral analysis studies have been published for mineral exploration. Established spectral analysis techniques such as spectral matching, band ratios and supervised classification of ASTER satellite imagery have been used to locate potential locations of previously undiscovered mineral bearing topaz rhyolite deposits in the Wah Wah Mountains of Beaver County, Utah. Ground truthing is essential in remote sensing studies to validate results. After ground truthing the sites, an error matrix will be calculated between field observations and the remote sensing imagery. The error matrix results indicate the percentage of image pixels that were correctly identified with spectral processing. This study advances spectral analysis techniques for mineral exploration that can be applied across the northern Great Basin region of Utah and southern Idaho.