Ore Geology Reviews 38 (2010) 59–69

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Ore Geology Reviews

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Detecting areas of high-potential gold mineralization using ASTER data

Safwat Gabr a,b, Abduwasit Ghulam b, Timothy Kusky c,⁎
a
National Authority for Remote Sensing and Space Sciences, 23 Joseph Tito St., El-Nozha El-Gedida, P.O. Box 1564, Alf Maskan, Cairo, Egypt
b
Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences and Center for Environmental Sciences, Saint Louis University, St Louis, MO 63103, USA
c
State Key Lab for Geological Processes and Mineral Resources, Ministry of Education, Three Gorges Geohazards Research Center, China University of Geosciences, Wuhan,
Hubei 430074, China

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: Remote sensing plays an important role in mineral exploration. One of its proven applications is extracting and
Received 23 January 2009 locating alteration zones that are related to gold deposits. In this study, surface reflectance data derived from the
Received in revised form 24 May 2010 Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer (ASTER) imagery are used to map
Accepted 30 May 2010
hydrothermal alteration zones for gold exploration. A band ratio derived from the image spectra (4/8, 4/2, and 8/9
Available online 8 June 2010
in RGB) and a mineral extraction method based on n-dimensional spectral feature space have been developed,
Keywords:
and tested against other conventional methods, and known auriferous alteration zones.
Arabian–Nubian Shield Spectral signatures used to construct the new band ratio are validated by a field study of the Abu-Marawat area in
Eastern Desert of Egypt the Eastern Desert of Egypt. Results indicate that the method is promising for identifying alteration zones and is a
Alteration zones useful tool for gold exploration in similar areas elsewhere.
Gold exploration © 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
Remote sensing

1. Introduction that provide detailed information on the mineralogy of the different

The ancient Egyptians explored for and mined gold and other
mineral deposits of the Eastern Desert of Egypt since pre-dynastic
times (before 3000 BCE). Gold's value was the main driving force
behind most of their mining activities that proved remarkably
successful in the extraction of that noble metal. In spite of their
primitive technology, most of the 95 well-known gold occurrences
and deposits (Khalil et al., 2003) in the Eastern Desert of Egypt were
discovered and exploited by the Pharaoh's geologists more than
5000 years ago (Botros, 2003).
With increasing demands for gold in the world market, economic
geology focused on recording the mode of occurrence of such
deposits, formulation of crude theories for their origin and exploita-
tion of the ore (e.g., Hume, 1937; Moharram et al., 1970; Sabet et al.,
1977; Sabet and Bordonosov, 1984; David, 1988; Botros, 1991, 1993a,
b, 1995a,b, 1998, 1999, 2002a,b, 2003, 2004 and others). The use of
remote sensing in mineral exploration began in the early 1940's by
using hand-held cameras pointed out of aircraft windows (Agar,
1994). This method progressed to the use of gray shaded through
color aerial photos in geological mapping in 1952 to more sophisti-
cated space technology using satellite and airborne multispectral and
hyperspectral digital imaging systems in use today. Over the years,
multispectral remote sensing has been successfully used for that
purpose especially with the development of remote sensing sensors
⁎ Corresponding author.
E-mail address: tkusky@gmail.com (T. Kusky).
rock types comprising the Earth's surface (Zhang et al., 2007).
Since the launch of the Spaceborne Landsat Thematic Mapper
(TM) satellites, new techniques and methodologies have been
developed for mapping hydrothermal alteration zones in arid regions
using multispectral remote sensing (e.g., Sultan and Arvidson, 1986;
Sabins, 1997, 1999; Abdelsalam et al., 2000; Ramadan et al. 2001;
Kusky and Ramadan, 2002; Liu et al., 2007). Spectral discrimination of
potential areas of gold mineralization (e.g., hydrothermal alteration
zones and iron gossans) is a common application of remote sensing
(e.g., Abdelsalam et al., 2000; Zhang et al., 2007). Many authors have
studied the extraction of spectral information related to this type of
target from different satellite sensors, including Landsat TM, Landsat
Enhanced Thematic Mapper Plus (ETM+) and the Advanced Space-
borne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer (ASTER). The use
of different image processing techniques such as band ratioing,
principal component analysis (PCA) and constrained energy minimi-
zation (CEM) has been reported by several authors (e.g., Crósta and
Moore, 1989; Loughlin, 1991; Rokos et al., 2000; Ferrier et al., 2002;
Crósta and Filho, 2003).
The launch of the Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and
Reflection Radiometer (ASTER) in December 1999 provided higher
spectral resolution data that enabled mineral exploration, particularly
for areas with poor background information (Di Tommaso and
Rubinstein, 2007). ASTER data consists of 14 data channels that cover
ranges of visible, near infrared (VNIR), shortwave infrared (SWIR) and
thermal infrared (TIR) regions of the electromagnetic spectrum. It
provides higher spatial, spectral, and radiometric resolutions than
traditional Landsat data (Abrams and Hook, 2001). Each ASTER scene

0169-1368/$ – see front matter © 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.oregeorev.2010.05.007
60 S. Gabr et al. / Ore Geology Reviews 38 (2010) 59–69
Fig. 1. Location map of the study area.
covers an area of 60 × 60 km2. The VNIR bands have a spatial resolution
of 15 m, the SWIR bands have a spatial resolution of 30 m and the TIR
bands have a spatial resolution of 90 m. The ASTER channels are more
contiguous in the short wave infrared region than those of Landsat,
yielding increased accuracy in the spectral identification of rocks and
minerals (Crósta and Filho, 2003). More spectral bands provide a better
understanding of the geology and soils of the earth surface. This is what
makes ASTER data superior over other sensors for lithological mapping
(e.g., Ninomiya et al., 2005, 2006, Gad and Kusky, 2006, 2007).
Image analysis techniques such as CEM and band ratios are based
on the spectral characteristics of surface types. CEM highlights the
target signature while suppressing background signals. Similarly,
band ratioing can maximize the signal-to-noise ratio by suppressing
the expression of topography (Sabins, 1997). Most of the band ratio
techniques are generally constructed using laboratory-measured
spectral profiles. However, laboratory-measured spectra (e.g., USGS
spectral library) do not exactly represent the actual field spectra due
to many uncontrolled factors that make the field conditions different
from laboratory measurements. In addition, spectral unmixing usually
requires detailed spectral profiles of each element in a mixed pixel,
and this becomes the bottle-neck, particularly for the use of middle-
scale satellite data. Therefore, developing techniques and methods
purely based on the image spectra itself, will provide a simple yet
efficient tool for feature extraction.
We carried out several field mapping programs comparing
ground-based geological mapping results with the spectral signature
of the same areas using specially processed ASTER images. The unique
perspective offered by comparing the processed ASTER imagery with
the high-resolution field mapping provides a unique opportunity to
test the utility of ASTER data for detecting the potential mineralized
vs. non-mineralized zones.
The main objective of this paper is to map hydrothermal alteration
zones of high-potential for gold mineralization in the North-Eastern
Desert of Egypt, and to discriminate them from altered zones with
low-potential for gold mineralization. Toward this end, we attempt to
evaluate the performance of existing techniques, and develop new
methods including a band ratio method based independently on
image spectra and minerals extraction in n-dimensional spectral
space. The Abu-Marawat in the Eastern Desert of Egypt has been
chosen as a case study, because of the abundant old gold workings
that may reflect the economic importance of the area warranting new
exploration projects.
2. Study site and geologic setting
Abu-Marawat is located in the southern part of the North-Eastern
Desert of Egypt, and is accessible by a 26 km long desert track south of
the Safaga–Qena asphalt road (Fig. 1). The area is characterized by
abundant quartz veins as well as layers of banded iron formation, which
attracted the attention of many authors (e.g., Hume, 1937; Armanious,
1969; Moharram et al., 1970; Sabet et al., 1977; Marten, 1986; Zaki et al.,
1987; David, 1988; El-Mezayen et al., 1995; Basta et al., 2000; Botros,
 S. Gabr et al. / Ore Geology Reviews 38 (2010) 59–69 61

Fig. 2. Geologic map of the study area.

2004). The study area is delimited by latitudes 26° 31′ 45″N and 26° 27′
21″N and longitudes 33° 36′ 01″E and 33° 39′ 50″E, covering an area of
approximately 51,290 km2 and is totally contained within the northern
Nubian Shield (Fig. 1).
According to Goldfarb et al. (2001) and Groves et al. (2003) gold
mineralization within the Nubian Shield is orogenic gold style related
to late stages of the deformational–metamorphic–magmatic history of
the Pan-African orogeny. Ancient Egyptians and Roman geologists
have exploited the area for gold. The ancient workings cover an area of
about 1 km2 northeast of Wadi Abu-Marawat, a tributary of Wadi
Semna (El-Mezayen et al., 1995), and the largest workings are located
along the eastern part of the old mining site (Fig. 2).
The basement geology of Abu-Marawat consists of units formed
during Neoproterozoic arc evolution in the Mozambique Ocean and in the
subsequent closure of this ocean at the end of the Neoproterozoic during
the formation of the Gondwanan supercontinent (e.g., Stern, 1994; Kusky
et al., 2003), an event that is generally described as the Pan-African
orogeny (Kennedy, 1964; Kröner, 1984; Kröner et al., 2003). The area
formed in an arc–back-arc basin environment (Dardir and Al-Wakeel,
1998; El-Shazly and El-Sayed, 2000) and is mostly covered by the volcano-
sedimentary sequence known as the Abu-Marawat arc (Botros, 1991,
2002a,b, 2003, 2004; Fowler et al., 2006) that has been regionally
metamorphosed to greenschist facies (Botros, 2004; Fowler et al., 2006). A
belt of intensely folded banded iron formation (BIF) is located in the
north-eastern part of the area, capping the Gabal Abu-Marawat
metavolcanics (Fig. 2). The BIF has fold axes that trend mostly N and
NNW (Botros, 2004; Fowler et al., 2006). In 2000, Basta et al. noted that
both the metavolcanics and BIF have nearly the same rare earth element
(REE) signature, with differences in absolute abundance, and used this as
evidence for them being derived from the same volcanogenic source.
Previous publications (e.g., El-Mezayen et al., 1995; Mohamed et al.,
2000) as well as field relations between the Neoproterozoic basement
62 S. Gabr et al. / Ore Geology Reviews 38 (2010) 59–69
Fig. 3. Flowchart for the approach of the PCA transformation of Ninomiya (2003) indices (from Zhang et al., 2007).
rocks covering Abu-Marawat area reveal that they are arranged from
oldest to youngest, with the oldest unit being talc-carbonates with
highly sheared serpentinites striking northward and dipping about 70°
to the west. Massive and sheared intermediate to acidic metavolcanics
structurally overlie these ultramafic rocks. The metavolcanics represent
the main rock unit covering the study area (about 55%), and commonly
contain interlayers of BIF, i.e., at Gabal Abu-Marawat (Fig. 2). These
rocks have been metamorphosed to greenschist facies and are intruded
by alkaline quartz diorite plutons (El-Nisr et al., 2001; Farahat et al.,
2007; Mohamed and El-Sayed, 2007) that form small outcrops north of
the area. Molasse-type sediments deposited during the late stages of the
East African orogeny (∼580 Ma) overlie the above-mentioned rocks
(Willis et al., 1988; Wilde and Youssef, 2002) covering most of the
western and southwestern part of the area with sharp contact with the
surrounding metavolcanics (Stern, 1981; El-Mezayen et al., 1995). All
the above rock assemblages have been intruded by calc-alkaline
granites with extensional dike swarms indicating a transition from
subduction through collision and extension after the formation of the
Fig. 4. Mineral mapping using (a) PCA transformed mineral indices approach “hybrid
approach”, (b) constrained energy minimization technique, (c) the resulting alteration
minerals abundance image with mineral fraction of the ASTER reflectance image using
the partial spectral unmixing in n-dimensional spectral feature space, and (d) is the
resulted PCA image of the spectral unmixing scored images.
juvenile continental crust at about 550 Ma (Vail, 1985; Greiling et al.,
1994).
Banded Iron Formations (BIF) form a stratigraphic unit of layered
volcanic and volcaniclastic rocks similar to those found in Archean
volcanic assemblages. The BIF layers are made up of hematite and
magnetite alternating with silica-rich bands as small horizons within
the volcano-sedimentary succession. Gold concentrations in the BIF
layers are up to 2.15 ppm (Botros, 1991). Botros (2004) related the
mineralization to the interaction between hot brine fluids and
seawater. The first were capable of leaching iron, silica, gold and
other elements from the volcanic rocks that when mixed with
seawater precipitated the BIF as chemical sediments.
In Abu-Marawat, only gold-bearing quartz veins have been
exploited by the ancient miners with open pit mining, with the
deepest old working in the Abu-Marawat mined area (Fig. 2) reaching
a depth of about 40 m.
3. Alteration minerals mapping
The Abu-Marawat area has no reported previous remote sensing
studies concerning alteration mapping, as there are no detailed
geological maps available. In this section we test and compare new
techniques to map the alteration minerals. We use high level (Level 2)
surface reflectance ASTER data collected over the study area. The
surface reflectance data are scaled between 0 and 1000 with both
radiometric and atmospheric corrections done by NASA's Data
Distribution Center. Spectral resampling has been used to downscale
the spatial resolution of the SWIR bands of the ASTER data to 15 m.
3.1. PCA transformed mineral indices
Many authors have used different remote sensing techniques
designated for target detection, including as CEM (Chang and Heinz,
2000; Settle, 2002; Chang and Wang, 2006), PCA (Crósta and Moore,
1989; Loughlin, 1991; Rokos et al., 2000; Crósta and Filho, 2003), band
ratios (Sultan and Arvidson, 1986; Rokos et al., 2000; Xu et al., 2004)
or both band ratios and PCA combined (Zhang et al., 2007).
The PCA technique (Pearson, 1901) is a mathematical procedure
widely used in the image processing industry today that transforms a
number of correlated spectral bands into a smaller number of
uncorrelated spectral bands called principal components. Therefore,
PCA helps to enhance and separate certain types of spectral signatures
from the background. However, PCA of individual spectral bands is
not capable of eliminating topographic and atmospheric effects due to
the fact that it is simply a rotation of spectral feature space to the
directions of maximum variance. This is what drives other authors
(e.g., Zhang et al., 2007) to use the PCA combined with other band
 S. Gabr et al. / Ore Geology Reviews 38 (2010) 59–69 63

Fig. 5. Mineral mapping using n-dimensional spectral feature space. (a) Separating the alteration minerals from the spectral feature space, black rectangle represents the area of the
overlapped pixels, (b) the resulting alteration minerals abundance image with mineral fraction of the ASTER reflectance image using the partial spectral unmixing in n-dimensional
spectral feature space and the USGS spectral library, (c) deviation of alteration minerals from the background spectra where the color scale represent how frequent the individual
surface reflectance value occur and ranging from blue (low frequent) to red (high frequent).

ratios to enhance mineral information. For convenience, we use the
term “hybrid method” to describe such techniques.
In the present work, we applied a hybrid method (Fig. 3) based on
the combination of band ratio images and the PCA method of Zhang et
al. (2007) who used the four mineralogical indices proposed by
Ninomiya (2003) for hydrothermal alteration mapping. The formulae
of Ninomiya (2003) indices are listed below:
OHI = (band 7/band 6) (band 4/band 6)
KLI = (band 4/band 5) (band 8/band 6)
ALI = (band 7/band 5) (band 7/band 8)
CLI = (band 6/band 8) (band 9/band 8)
where OHI is the index for OH-bearing minerals, KLI is the kaolinite
index, ALI is the alunite index, and CLI is the calcite index. Each index
was thresholded and then merged spatially to map the alteration
zones using the mineralogical indices for each alteration mineral.
Results obtained from these indices include feasibility-abundance
maps of the OH-bearing minerals including alunite, kaolinite,
muscovite and montmorillonite from the SWIR surface reflectance
data (Fig. 4a).

3.2. Constrained energy minimization (CEM)

Harsanyi (1993) developed the constrained energy minimization

(CEM) technique, which has been used to solve the typical adaptive
beam-forming problem in signal processing (Resmini et al., 1997;
Fig. 6. Average spectra for both altered and unaltered rocks. Numbers 1–5 and 7 Farrand and Harsanyi, 1997). Since then, it has become one of the
represent the width of each Landsat Thematic Mapper band. (Sabins, 1997). most widely used techniques today for target abundance mapping. It
64 S. Gabr et al. / Ore Geology Reviews 38 (2010) 59–69
Fig. 7. Mineralized altered rocks with an open cut represent the location of the quartz vein exploited by the Ancient Egyptians.
performs a matched filtering (MF) of hyperspectral/multispectral
images, then linearly constrains a desired target signature while
minimizing other unknown signatures where the only required
knowledge is the training target spectra to be provided as user end
members. A partial unmixing matrix based on the estimate of sample
correlation highlights target abundances. Therefore, the contrast
between target spectra and the background are enhanced by
maximizing the response of the known end members while suppres-
sing the response of the composite unknown background. The ability
of this technique to deal with mixed background spectra and to
accommodate that nonlinear mixing among them is a major
advantage for the CEM over the previously discussed “hybrid
method”. Moreover, it has the advantage of being a straightforward
technique that can be used for alteration zone mapping with fewer
field visits.
The ASTER spectral library (Version 1.2, http://speclib.jpl.nasa.gov)
was used to identify the four alteration minerals (alunite, kaolinite,
Fig. 8. Average spectra for altered (mineralized and non-mineralized) and unaltered
rocks in the study area. Highlighted (gray bars) are the bands used in the band ratio.
montmorillonite and muscovite) from the VNIR/SWIR surface reflec-
tance data. The resulting alteration minerals abundance image (Fig. 4b)
was found to be sharper and easier to interpret than the image produced
by the hybrid method (Fig. 4a).
However, the CEM technique did not perform well in the
conditions where the background signature is not easily detected,
therefore, it fails to identify rare minerals (e.g., secondary iron-rich
parts of the alteration) that are not spatially dominant in the image. In
other words, it is problematic to enhance the target spectra while
minimizing background “energy” using CEM when there is no
apparent difference between the target and background spectral
signatures.
3.3. Spectral unmixing in n-dimensional spectral feature space
To separate minerals between each cell, we applied a partial
spectral unmixing method based on the “Spectral Hourglass” scheme
(Kruse et al., 2003) available in ENVI 4.7 (ENVI® image processing and
analysis software, from ITT Visual Information Solutions). This
method starts with reducing abundant information and data
dimensionality using the Minimum Noise Fraction (MNF) transform
then subsequently applies Pixel Purity Index-Mapping (PPI) for the
determination of the purest pixels in the image and the extraction of
end members utilizing the n-Dimensional-Visualizer tool (n-D-Vis).
The extracted end members are then compared to known spectra
from USGS spectral libraries to further identify and prepare for
Spectral Angle Mapper (SAM) classification. This method is one of the
widely accepted and popular image processing techniques for
hyperspectral image processing. However, it may not be optimal for
multispectral data. In our case with ASTER data, the majority of the
pixels were somehow removed by the scheme. In other words, all of
the pixels in the output SAM class image had values of zero, which
indicates “unclassified”. The reason that the SAM class image left
everything removed or unclassified was that the “Maximum Angle”
parameter for the SAM procedure was set at the default value of 0.10
(in radians). However, the actual angles that SAM calculated for the
ASTER data were all around 0.3 and 0.4 rad. Consequently, the
majority of the pixels were assigned to the “unclassified” class due to
 S. Gabr et al. / Ore Geology Reviews 38 (2010) 59–69 65

Fig. 9. ASTER band ratio image (Bands 4/8, 4/2, and 8/9 in RGB respectively) showing the mineralized parts of the alteration zones (whitish color inside the pink zones), pink color
represent the mineralized surface weathering.

the fact that none of the angles were smaller than the maximum
angle. While the 0.10 rad maximum angle was meant for hyperspec-
tral data where subtle differences in spectra may distinguish between
different materials, it was not an ideal option for multispectral data
such as the ASTER image. It is obvious that increasing the maximum
angle might not be a solution since the angle variances are small. We
found that the “rule images”, which show the actual SAM values
between each pixel and the specified target spectrum, contained
valuable information and show reasonable results. Therefore, we used
byproducts generated during the processing scheme, namely, the rule
images–spectrally matched score images.
The rule images are the images that contain the actual spectral
angles that are calculated in radians. They are also called spectrally
matched score images because they are generated by spectrally
matching the target spectra with known spectra. Each pixel is scored
between 0 and 1 according to its closeness to the maximum angle
threshold in radians. If the “match” between the angle of target
spectra with known spectra in n-dimensional spectral feature space is
perfect, then the rule image pixel value is 1. For all other cases it varies
between 0 and 1.
In the next step; (1) n-dimensional spectral feature spaces were
implemented to map these minerals (Fig. 4c) using the satellite data,
66 S. Gabr et al. / Ore Geology Reviews 38 (2010) 59–69
Fig. 10. (a) The band ratio 4/8 showing the increase in the response of the Fe-oxides in the altered mineralized rocks in bright white color. (b) The band ratio 4/2 separating the
altered mineralized rocks from all the other background materials (both altered non-mineralized and the unaltered rocks) in a very bright white color. (c) The band ratio 8/9
contains averaged values from all the rock units in the image area that has been generated for better color contrast.
then (2) PCA was applied to the matched filtering score images
(Fig. 4d). As described in previous sections, matched filtering,
minimum noise transformation, and absorption feature enhancement
techniques were implemented. Fig. 5 shows the abundance and
deviation of alteration zone minerals from the background pixels.
There are critical values where vectors of alteration minerals separate
from the background signal in the developed spectral feature space.
4. Mapping areas of high-potential mineralization
The most important mineralogical difference between the altered
and unaltered rocks is the abundance of alteration minerals such as
alunite, montmorillonite and kaolinite in the altered rocks. Moreover,
the difference between the mineralized and the non-mineralized
altered rocks is the presence of abundant secondary iron minerals
such as goethite, hematite, limonite and jarosite in association with
other alteration minerals.
In the altered rocks, the change in abundance of any of the above-
mentioned alteration minerals would lead to a slight change in the
reflectance value that depends on that mineral's spectral
characteristics.
Sabins (1997) showed the curves of the average spectra form their
measurements for both altered and unaltered rocks (Fig. 6). Sabins
(1997) observed that the spectral reflectance of both the altered and
unaltered rock are characterized by lower reflectance in the TM band
7 than band 5 while in the visible portion of the spectrum, the altered
rocks have higher red reflectance due to the iron enrichment of the
rock.
Because the iron oxide-rich parts of the alteration are considered
to be the main target for gold exploration, and due to the spectral and
spatial capabilities of the ASTER images, we collected spectral
information about well-known targets as a step toward identifying
the potential mineralized parts of the alteration zones. For this
purpose, we used ASTER surface reflectance images to collect spectral
information about target areas that we classified in the field to be
unaltered, altered non-mineralized and altered mineralized rocks.
Fig. 7 represents an area of mineralized altered rocks, with high iron
oxide content, that was exploited by the ancient Egyptians.
Precise GPS measurements were taken over and around the old
workings of the Abu-Marawat area and the calculated average spectra
are plotted in Fig. 8. Resulting average spectral curves in Fig. 8 show a
general agreement with Sabins's (1997) observation with some
exceptions. The average spectra for the altered mineralized and
non-mineralized rocks show the same lower reflectance in ASTER
bands 5, 6, 7 and 8 and slight to moderate reflectance in band 9 (the
equivalent to TM band 7) than the ASTER band 4 (the equivalent to
TM band 5) while in the visible portion of the spectrum only the
ASTER band 2 (the equivalent to TM band 3) of the altered
mineralized rocks has a higher spectral reflectance than those of the
unaltered and altered non-mineralized zones. The reflectance of the
average spectra of the unaltered rocks appears the same as those of
the altered mineralized and non-mineralized rocks except for its
highest reflectance in band 9.
Dividing one spectral band by another provides an image of
relative band intensities that is suitable for mapping (Sabins, 1997).
Based on the spectral profiles of the different averaged spectral curves
for these rocks, we developed a new band ratio to enhance the
spectral difference between the target spectra and to reduce the
topographic effect in the image.
An ASTER band ratio image (bands 4/8, 4/2, and 8/9 in RGB
respectively) has been created for better separation of the mineralized
parts of the alteration zones (Fig. 9). The ratio 4/8 (Fig. 10a) has been
chosen to increase the response of the iron oxides in the altered
mineralized rocks. The ratio 4/2 (Fig. 10b) has been chosen to separate
the altered mineralized rocks from all the other background materials
(both altered non-mineralized and the unaltered rocks). Finally, and
for better contrast for the resulting image we choose the 8/9 ratio
(Fig. 10c) to make an image for averaged values from all the rock units
in the image area.
In addition to mapping the mineralized part of the alteration, the
method shows promise to be able to visually separate the mineralized
wadi deposits from the other wadi deposits. Fig. 9 shows the
mineralized parts in white color surrounded by pinkish-colored
areas that represent the weathered surface of the mineralized zones.
These pinkish areas were sampled in the wadi from locations close to
and away from the mineralization zones, looking for heavy minerals
that are typically associated with gold deposits (e.g., pyrite,
magnetite, etc.). Since these heavy minerals were not observable
within samples taken from the surface of the wadi deposits using our
field separation method, we had to sample the soil at about 40 cm
 S. Gabr et al. / Ore Geology Reviews 38 (2010) 59–69
Fig. 11. (a) The digging process for sampling at 40 cm depth. (b) The heavy minerals
separation process that was used in this study. (c) The black residuals after the
separation showing the amount of the heavy minerals in a single (∼1 kg) sample.
depth (Fig. 11a) where heavy minerals with expected enrichments
(that deviates the pixel towards the mineralization signature) were
concentrated. We performed simple heavy mineral separation
methods (Fig. 11b) and examined these minerals with a 20× hand-
lens. Samples are magnetite rich (Fig. 11c) with some fresh pyrite. The
amount of heavy minerals decreases away from the mineralized parts
of the alteration as the pinkish color vanishes from the satellite image
(Fig. 9).
5. Results and discussion
In this study, ASTER data was used to map the mineralogical units
related to gold deposits and test the data and techniques for use as an
exploration tool in areas around the Abu-Marawat gold mine where
promising locations were expected. Several field visits were carried
out for detailed lithological mapping, resulting in the production of a
detailed map that provided useful information for gold exploration in
and around the Abu-Marawat area.
67
Analysis of the ASTER surface reflectance data provided a good
basis for alteration minerals mapping. Different mapping techniques
have been tested over the Abu-Marawat mine area to map the a priori
known hydrothermally altered rocks. A simple band ratio technique
based on spectra from the satellite image has been developed and
tested over the Abu-Marawat mine then applied over a wider area
covering most the distance between the Abu-Marawat mine to the
north and the Semna mine to the southwest (Fig. 1) to highlight
promising areas for potential gold.
Comparatively, three different methods have been implemented:
(1) the hybrid method that can be simply described as a PCA
transform of mineral indices, (2) the Constrained Energy Minimiza-
tion, and (3) spectral unmixing in n-dimensional space.
We used the same procedure performed by Zhang et al. (2007) for
the south Chocolate Mountains (California) area (the hybrid method)
on the Abu-Marawat area that had no previous remote sensing studies
related to mapping alteration zones. Results of the PCA of individual
bands are omitted here since the method and its advantages and
disadvantages and have been discussed in previous literature (e.g.,
Henebry, 1997). Four minerals including alunite, kaolinite, muscovite
and montmorillonite were selected for our analysis. Then, four
mineralogical indices using the reflectance data of the six SWIR
channels, proposed by Ninomiya (2003), were used for the alteration
mineral mapping. Then a PCA analysis was conducted using the four
mineral indices to remove the noise and reduce the data dimension-
ality. The method was found to fail where background signatures are
not distinguishable from the altered outcrops.
The CEM technique, available from latest versions of ENVI 4.7
(ENVI® image processing and analysis software, from ITT Visual
Information Solutions), was implemented. The four alteration
minerals mapped from the ASTER surface reflectance data (alunite,
kaolinite, montmorillonite and muscovite) were detected using the
CEM technique complemented by laboratory spectra. The distribu-
tion patterns of these four minerals agree well with the alteration
zones derived by the mineralogical indices that were derived using
radiance data. All the results extracted from the ASTER data provide
detailed mineralogical and lithological information for gold explo-
ration in Zhang's et al. (2007) work on the southern Chocolate
Mountains area. This case study shows that the CEM technique is a
good subpixel unmixing analysis tool for analyzing ASTER reflec-
tance data producing sharper and more focused results but yet did
not perform well in conditions where the background signature
was not easily detected and is unable to separate signatures that
were not spatially dominant in the image.
Spectral unmixing in n-dimensional spectral feature space was
used to separate the four alteration minerals mentioned above. PCA
has been applied to the resulting matched filter score images to
further reduce information redundancy. This method turned out to be
very accurate, separating the four alteration minerals as well as
highlighting the extent and main trend of the alteration zones around
the Abu-Marawat area.
Finally, the capability of the ASTER VNIR and SWIR bands have been
tested to separate the altered and unaltered rocks and also to separate
areas of very high-potential gold mineralization. Accurate GPS points
have been collected over well-known areas of mineralization, especially
those that have been exploited by the old miners as well as other GPS
sample points collected over areas of unaltered and altered rocks that do
not carry mineralization. The three collected sets of points were plotted
on the ASTER image with the average surface reflectance values for each
of the three sets collected from the satellite image at each location for
further examination (Fig. 7). Comparing the spectral reflectance of the
high-potential gold-bearing alteration zones identified in the field with
the average spectra from the background rocks using the image spectra
provided a simple yet efficient band ratio image (bands 4/8, 4/2, and 8/9
in RGB respectively) that successfully highlighted these parts of the
alteration of high gold potential. The results have been verified in the
68 S. Gabr et al. / Ore Geology Reviews 38 (2010) 59–69
field. GPS data points were collected from and around the Abu-Marawat
mine where most of the old workings are located. Other highlighted
sites in the ratio image (Fig. 9) are those that contain mineralized quartz
veins and iron gossans, which are ideal prospects that may contain gold.
The present study encourages the use of ASTER images as a tool for
mineral exploration. The re-use of methodologies that have been used
before on old sensors such as the Landsat MSS have proven to work
well with the ASTER data because of its higher spectral resolution. The
highlighted parts of Abu-Marawat area (Fig. 8) are potential for
significant, undiscovered gold ore.
6. Conclusions
This paper explores potential means to detect hydrothermal
alteration zones of high-potential for gold mineralization in the
North-Eastern Desert of Egypt, and to discriminate them from altered
zones with low-potential for gold mineralization. A band ratio derived
from the image spectra and the spectral unmixing method based on n-
dimensional spectral feature space has been developed, and validated
through field investigation of the old mining sites in the Abu-Marawat
area. Results are proven to be effective, and in accordance with results
of field investigations. Methods used in mineralogical information
extraction from the ASTER surface reflectance data indicate that the
study area may have potential for further gold exploration based on
extensive, intense alteration zones around the old mine sites.
Acknowledgements
This work was supported by a grant from the Embassy of the Arab
Republic of Egypt, awarded to T. Kusky, and by Alexander-Nubia Gold
Exploration Company. Additional support was provided by the National
Natural Science Foundation of China (grant 40821061) and the Ministry
of Education of China (B07039). We thank the anonymous reviewers for
their comments and suggestions which greatly aided revision of this
paper.
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