Mapping quartz, carbonate minerals and mafic-ultramafic rocks

using remotely sensed multispectral thermal infrared ASTER data

Yoshiki Ninomiya
Geological Survey of Japan, AIST

ABSTRACT
ASTER sensor aboard Terra satellite has a capability of spectral measurement in the thermal infrared (TIR) region with
a spatial resolution adequate for geological applications. This paper attempts mapping quarts, carbonate minerals and
bulk SiO2 content in silicate rocks with the indices defined for ASTER TIR multispectral data. Silica minerals
represented by the commonest mineral on earth, quartz, have a unique spectral property in TIR. They have lower
emissivity in ASTER band 10 and band 12 spectral regions than in band 11. All the common carbonate minerals
represented by calcite and dolomite have another unique spectral feature. They have low emissivity in ASTER band 14
spectral region, and high emissivity in ASTER band 10 to 13 spectral region. In silicate rocks, the wavelength at trough
in TIR emissivity spectra systematically moves to longer as the rock type changes from felsic to ultramafic. The
emissivity in band 12 is lower than in band 13 for felsic rocks, and higher for ultramafic rocks. Using the spectral
features described above, several indices are defined. They are applied to ASTER Level 1B data in the study areas. The
results are compared with the information from the field and the laboratory geological investigations including the TIR
spectra of the rocks collected at the site and published geological maps. Potential ability of the indices in mapping
quarts, carbonate minerals and silicate rocks is suggested.
Keywords: emissivity spectra, lithologic mapping, geology, calcite, dolomite, silicate, igneous rock, SiO2 content

1. INTRODUCTION
Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer (ASTER1) sensor multispectrally obtains image of
earth not only in visible to near infrared (VNIR; ASTER has 3 bands in 0.5 to 0.9 micron with 15m resolution, with a
stereoscopic capability for the band in near infrared) and in shortwave infrared (SWIR; 6 bands in 1.6 to 2.5 micron for
ASTER with 30m resolution) spectral regions, but it has 5 bands in thermal infrared (TIR) region with 90m resolution
and less than 0.3K noise equivalent delta temperature (NE∆T) for the blackbody at 300K. A scene of ASTER covers
about 60 x 60 km area. ASTER-TIR is the first satellite-borne multispectral TIR remote sensing system with spectral
and spatial resolutions adequate for geological applications.
An algorithm to estimate SiO2 weight content, the most basic discriminator of silicate rocks, using spectral emissivity
data to be derived from ASTER-TIR was proposed2. Atmospherically corrected surface radiance and surface emissivity
data are planned to be distributed into public as one of a series of standard ASTER level 2 data products, however, they
are still on validation stage. Even though after these data products are released, the level 2 and higher data products like
surface emissivity data will be generated for just a little part of the observed scenes because of the limitation of the
computation ability in the ASTER standard data processing system. On the other hand, the ASTER level 1A data
product with the minimum correction to the original ASTER level 0 data is generated automatically for all the observed
scenes. The ASTER level 1B data product with the fundamental radiometric and geometric corrections is generated
automatically for all the scenes satisfying a condition of cloud coverage and others, and also generated individually on
the basis of user request. The level 1B data product is the input of the most of higher data products, so that the level 1B
generation process is assigned relatively much computational resources. Therefore, it is a very important subject to
establish a method to derive the outline of rock type distributions in a scene using ASTER level 1 data. For the purpose,
Ninomiya and Fu3 defined Quartz Index (QI), Carbonate Index (CI) and SiO2 content Index (SI) assigned to
ASTER-TIR bands from the spectral emissivity property measured for the corresponding rocks, and made a qualitative
analysis to the result images applied on digital number of CCT count (DN) of ASTER level1B data. This paper applies
the indices on the multi-temporal ASTER level 1B radiance at sensor data observing a study site in the Beishan area of
Gansu Province, China, and shows potential ability of the indices in the thematic mapping of quartzites, carbonate rocks

Yoshiki.Ninomiya@aist.go.jp; phone 81 298 61-3975; fax 81 298 61-3617; http://www.gsj.jp; Geological Survey of Japan, National
Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology, 1-1-1-7 Higashi, Tsukuba, Ibaraki, 3058567 Japan

Thermosense XXIV, Xavier P. Maldague, Andrés E. Rozlosnik, Editors,

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 as well as sub-mapping silicate rocks.

2. STUDY SITE
Figure 1 displays geological information compiled from the published geological maps4 overlapping a VNIR false color
composite image (R: band3, G: band2, B: band1) of an ASTER scene obtained on April 7, 2000 (refered as “ASTER
BS-1” in the later part of this manuscript) at a part of the Beishan mountains area, north-western Gansu province, China.
The study site is whole the area covered by the image, the center of which is about 95 degrees 5 minutes in the east
longitude and 41 degrees 25 minutes in the north latitude, expanding about 60 by 60 square kilometers. The elevation in
this site ranges 1500m to 2500m asl. Southwestern part of the image, not overlapped by the geological information
because the published geological map at the scale of 1/200,000 was not available, suggests that the vegetation is very
sparse and VNIR spectra of the most materials exposed in this area are featureless. Arrow lines in the figure point a few
small clouds in the southeastern part of the image, and the shadows are observed in the NNW direction of them.
In the study site, a variety suite of intrusive rocks from felsic to ultramafic, as well as many kinds of rocks in a variety
of geological era from Precambrian to Cenozoic, are exposed very well. Sinian system corresponding to upper
Precambrian (the most part of the area noted as Precambrian in Figure 1 excluding a region at left-uppermost of the
scene which is of Proterozoic) is dominated by dolomitic limestone and quartzite. For all the other geological units
before and after Sinian system, major components are siliceous or silicate sedimentary, metamorphic or volcanic rocks
with minor exposures of carbonate rocks. Quaternary system, the most part of Cenozoic, is mainly composed of debris.
Four ASTER data scenes observing the study site obtained on June 10, 2000 (“ASTER BS-2”), on August 13, 2000
(“ASTER BS-3”), on February 10, 2001 (“ASTER BS-4”) and ASTER BS-1 are used for evaluating the seasonal effect
on the result. Additionally, two ASTER data scenes at the western adjacent pass, which observes about 40 to 50% of the
study area, obtained on July 28, 2000 (“ASTER BS-5”) and October 16, 2000 (“ASTER BS-6”) are used for the
comparison.

3. LITHOLOGIC INDICES
5
Vegitation index is the most representative example of index defined for multi-spectral remote sensing data utilizing
the spectral features of earth surface materials. The examples in geology field are the index utilizing the VNIR spectral
absorption feature of iron oxide6 and calcite index / alunite index defined for discriminating a suite of altered minerals
using SWIR multiband data7. Here, several indices3 defined for ASTER-TIR data utilizing the spectral properties of
representative rocks on earth shown in Figure 2 are applied to the ASTER data scenes.

3.1 Quartz Index (QI)

As the spectral emissivity curve of a siliceous rock shown in Figure 2(b), all the silica minerals represented by the most
common mineral on earth, quartz, have a unique spectral feature in thermal infrared region. That is, the silica minerals
have relatively higher emissivity at 8.65 micron region corresponding to the ASTER band 11 than at 8.3 micron region
corresponding to ASTER band 10 and at 9.1 micron region corresponding to ASTER band 12. This spectral pr operty is
applied to define QI for mapping siliceous rocks using ASTER-TIR data as

QI = D 11 × D11
D 10 × D12
, (1)

where Di (i=10,11,…,14) is a value related to ASTER band i, for example, digital number of CCT counts (DN),
radiance at sensor of the level 1B product, atmospherically corrected radiance at surface of a level 2 product, or surface
emissivity of a level 2 product. Here in this paper, radiance at sensor is applied as D i. It is not atmospherically corrected,
therefore, it is a function o f the temperature, the emissivity of the target and the parameters of the atmosphere. However,
it is expected that, spatially or spectrally, the information on the emissivity is emphasized and the information on the
temperature and the atmosphere is diminished because the indices used here are defined as the basis of ratio between
spectral bands.

3.2 Carbonate Index (CI)

The major carbonate minerals on earth, calcite and dolomite, have a unique spectral feature in thermal infrared region,

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 Figure 1 A compiled geological map of the study area displayed on ASTER-VNIR color composite image. The
Precambrian rock unit marked “A” is carbonate, and the one marked “B” is siliceous.

Figure 12 Color composite image of QI, CI and SI-3 Figure 13 D-stretch color composite image assigned
assigned to red, green and blue, respectively, for bands 13, 12 and 10 to red, green and blue, respectively,
“ASTER BS-1” and “ASTER BS-3.” for “ASTER BS-1” and “ASTER BS-3.”

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 as shown in Figure 2(a). That is, they have an absorption feature only at 11.3 micron region corresponding to ASTER
band 14. The spectral property is modified in natural cases they are mixed with other materials, however, the spectral
property opposite to the one of silica and silicate minerals, which emissivity at band 14 region is less than the one at
band 13 region, is usually kept. This makes sense of defining CI as

CI = D 13

D
. (2)
14

3.3 SiO2 content Index (SI)

Silicate rocks composed of silica and silicate minerals represented by igneous rocks have a unique spectral property in
TIR. That is, the wavelength at the roughly estimated trough in the emissivity spectrum systematically shifts to longer
as the rock type changes from felsic (high SiO 2 content) to ultramafic (low SiO2 content), as suggested in Figure 2 (c) to
(f). Felsic rocks have high emissivity in longer wavelengths corresponding to ASTER 13 to 14 spectral range. By
contrast, mafic and ultramafic rocks have high emissivity in shorter wavelengths corresponding to ASTER 10 to 12
spectral range. SI, which positively correlates to SiO 2 weight content in silicate rocks, is defined from the property as

SI = D 13

D
. (3)
12

SI is also expected to correlate positively to QI, so that the inverse of SI,

SI − = D 12

D
, (4)
13

has the advantage in the case of image analysis using the combination of the indices. In this paper, SI- and its derivative
index (SI-m defined in the next section) are exclusively applied as SiO2 content index (SI).

3.4 Separation among the indices

Figure 2 shows emissivity spectra of rocks collected at the study site measured for the fresh internal surface of the rocks.
Figure 3 shows emissivity spectra of the same samples but measured for the external weathered surface. The method to
measure the spectra is shown in Ninomiya et al.8 Simulated ASTER data are generated by convolving the measured
spectra with ASTER responsivity functions9, shown as dots in Figures 2 and 3. The simulated ASTER data are applied
to calculate the indices defined above, as shown in tables 1 and 2 with the SiO 2 weight content determined by chemical
analysis. These tables clarify that QI and CI are supersensitive only to the respective target rocks. QI, however,
indicates relatively high value for the ultramafic rock despite it generally contains no quarts. SI- certainly shows
negative correlation to the SiO2 content in silicate rocks, however, it indicates relatively high value for the carbonate
rock. To eliminate these unexpected behaviors of the indices, arithmetical separation among the indices are introduced
as

QI
QI m = m , (5)
SI −
SI −
SI − m = m . (6)
CI
(Here, separation degree m is an integer value equal to or greater than 0.)

QI1 and SI-3 are calculated for the simulated ASTER data, and appended to the tables 1 and 2. A trend in the calculated
indices common for both the spectra of fresh and weathered surfaces is confirmed. That is, QI1 correlates to SiO2
content in the igneous rocks with the characteristics supersensitive to siliceous rocks kept, and SI-3 indicates relatively
low value not only for siliceous rocks but also for carbonate rocks. QI 1, however, looses some information about quarts
that is identified in QI. Here, only QI 0 (=QI) is used as QI in the later part of this manuscript.

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 There is a variety of mineral combinations in silicate rocks so that it is necessary to check whether the trend found in
the calculated SI for only the four igneous rock samples is the general one or not. For the purpose, emissivity spectra of
38 igneous rock samples10 collected at the study site measured for fresh and weathered surfaces are applied to calculate
SI-3 and compared with the SiO2 weight content, as shown in Figures 4 and 5, respectively, to comfirm the generality of
the obtained trend.

ASTER band number ASTER band number

10 11 12 13 14 10 11 12 13 14

(a) (a)
50% 50%
(b) (b)

(c) (c)

(d) (d)

(e) (e)

(f) (f)

8 9 10 11 12 8 9 10 11 12
wavelength(µm) wavelength(µm)

Figure 2 Spectral emissivity with the convolved data Figure 3 Spectral emissivity for the same samples
into ASTER responsivities for fresh part of the rock measured in Figure 2 but for weathered part.
samples (a)carbonate rock; (b)siliceous one; (c)felsic
one; (d)intermediate one; (e)mafic one; (f)ultramafic one.
Each tick in Y axis represents 1.0 or 0.5 in emissivity.

1.5 1.5

1.3 1.3

1.1 1.1

0.9 0.9

0.7 0.7
0.3 0.4 0.5 0.6 0.7 0.8 0.3 0.4 0.5 0.6 0.7 0.8
SiO2 (wt%) SiO2 (wt%)

Figure 4 Scatter plot between SiO2 content and SI-3 for Figure 5 Same as Fig. 6, but for the weathered part of
the fresh part of 38 igneous rock samples10. The the samples. The correlation coefficient is 0.821.
correlation coefficient is 0.886.

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 Table 1. Calculated index values for simulated ASTER data on fresh rock surface.

sample code BS11 BS45 BS1 BS3 BS2 BS52

rock type carbonate siliceous felsic intermediate mafic ultramafic

SiO2 (wt%) - - 77.1 64.3 53.1 42.9

QI 1.000 1.174 0.973 0.978 0.979 1.017

CI 1.094 0.983 0.977 0.970 0.946 0.930

-
SI 1.014 0.704 0.818 0.914 1.059 1.183

QI1 0.990 1.540 1.180 1.060 0.905 0.836

-
SI 3 0.773 0.741 0.877 1.000 1.249 1.473

Table 2. Calculated index values for simulated ASTER emissivity data on weathered rock surface.

sample code BS11 BS45 BS1 BS3 BS2 BS52

rock type carbonate siliceous felsic intermediate mafic ultramafic

SiO2 (wt%) - - 77.1 64.3 53.1 42.9

QI 1.004 1.276 0.919 1.030 1.019 1.016

CI 1.047 0.973 0.966 0.985 0.962 0.929

-
SI 0.995 0.589 0.785 0.972 1.006 1.200

QI1 1.005 1.807 1.181 1.016 0.969 0.833

-
SI 3 0.867 0.638 0.870 1.018 1.129 1.501

3.5 Application on ASTER data

To determine the separation degree m in SI-m suitable for the practical use, a set of images of SI-m for m=0 to 5
processed for ASTER BS-1 is shown in Figure 6. The Precambrian rock unit marked “A” in Figure 1, carbonate, be
darker but noise is amplified as m increases, and it appears the case m=3 is well balanced.
As the pre-processing, atmospherically uncorrected brightness temperature of ASTER band 13 is derived from level 1B
data for the purpose to detect the pixels with abnormally low temperature, mainly targeting clouds. At the spectral
region corresponding to ASTER band 13, relatively, it is not so significant the difference of the emissivity among the
natural materials, or in another word, the variance of the emissivity among the pixels is not significant, therefore,
emissivity does not contribute much on the calculated brightness temperature. Figure 7 shows a set of images of the
brightness temperature for the 6 ASTER data scenes (ASTER BS-1 to BS-6), gray scaled from 280K to 320K. The
individual effect caused by low temperature of the regional atmospheric anomaly (mostly by clouds) is easily
distinguished with the seasonal effect on the surface temperature.
QI, CI, SI and SI-3 are applied to the 6 ASTER level 1B data scenes, as shown in Figures 8 to 11.

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 Figure 6 A set of images of SI-m for m= (a); 0 to (f); 5, processed for “ASTER BS-1. ” linearly gray-scaled between
0.7 and 1.0.

Figure 7 Brightness temperature images for band 13 of ASTER level 1B data without atmospheric correction, for (a);
“ASTER BS-1” to (f); “ASTER BS-6.” Gray scale of each image is linearly stretched between 280K and 320K.

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 Figure 8 Images of QI for (a); “ASTER BS-1” to (f); “ASTER BS-6,” linearly gray-scaled between 0.95 and 1.2.

Figure 9 Images of CI for (a); “ASTER BS-1” to (f); “ASTER BS-6,” linearly gray-scaled between 1.0 and 1.1.

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 Figure 10 Images of SI -0 for (a); “ASTER BS-1” to (f); “ASTER BS-6,” linearly gray-scaled between 0.7 and 1.0.

Figure 11 Images of SI -3 for (a); “ASTER BS-1” to (f); “ASTER BS-6,” linearly gray-scaled between 0.7 and 1.0.

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 4. DISCUSSIONS AND CONCLUSION
3
Ninomiya and Fu made an analysis on the index images applied to several scenes of ASTER level 1B DN data
observing the study site, in which the color composite image of QI, CI and SI-m (Figure 12 for “ASTER BS-1” and
“ASTER BS-3”) is compared with the geology and ASTER level 2 decorrelation contrast stretching11 (D-stretch) image
(Figure 13), and showed a very good agreement of the index images with the geology and the superiority of the indices
over D-stretch in geological use. That study established a simple method to provide a lithologic sketch with the relative
intensity distribution of the indices or color distribution in a scene. Here in this paper, discussions are made on the
absolute intensity of the indices for a set of ASTER scenes observing a study site in different seasons to clarify the
ability of the indices in a quantitative lithologic mapping.
The intensity level of QI images (Figure 8) does not differ so much each other, despite the significant difference in the
surface temperature level as shown in Figure 7 as well as the different atmospheric condition. This suggests a potential
possibility of QI in a high quality mapping of siliceous rocks by giving an appropriate threshold. However, it is
somewhat affected by the surface temperature (as indicated by Figure 14 shown below), therefore, a higher quality is
expected if the brightness temperature is normalized with the method described later. The dependency of QI on the
atmospheric condition and the temperature of the target samples is analyzed in Figure 14. The simulated ASTER level
1B radiance at sensor data is generated from the spectral emissivity data of the rock samples shown in Figure 2 and for
the theoretical blackbody by giving the sample temperature as 300K, and calculating the atmospheric path radiance to
sensor and the atmospheric transmittance between the surface and the sensor at each elevation above sea level using
LOWTRAN712, an atmospheric radiation code. The error bars given to the selected samples (siliceous rock and
blackbody in the case of Figure 14) at some selected elevations are for setting the sample temperature to 280K and
320K. Atmospheric downwelling radiance, which mainly affects to diminish the spectral contrast in emissivity, as the
result, which affects on the contrast of the index value of the sample against the one of the blackbody which is not
changed by downwelling radiance, is not considered in this figure. This figure shows weaker atmospheric and
temperature effects on QI as the atmospheric density be low (i.e., elevation be high), suggesting its high stability to the
temperature (i.e. season) if it is not so atmospherically thick.
On the other hand, the intensity of CI is significantly affected by temperature as Figure 9 shows that the higher is the
temperature, the darker is the CI image. This is supported by the dependency analysis of CI on the atmospheric
condition and the temperature shown in Figure 15, suggesting low stability to the temperature even if it is
atmospherically thin. To improve the high dependency on the temperature of CI, ASTER level 1B data with a
normalization of the base blackbody radiance by setting the band 13’s brightness temperature to 300K is prepared for
calculating the indices, as CI for the normalized level 1B data shown in Figure 16. The seasonal effect recognized in
Figure 9 is significantly diminished in Figure 16, suggesting a potential ability of CI for the normalized ASTER level
1B radiance at sensor data in a high quality mapping of carbonate rocks by giving an appropriatethreshold.
It is not clear in a set of SI-0 images (Figure 10), however, Figure 17 shows that SI-0 is obviously suffered by surface
temperature even if it is in atmospherically thin condition. By contrast, SI-3 is highly stabilized against the temperature
of the sample as shown in Figure 18, as well as it is defined to eliminate the effect of carbonate found in SI-0 as
discussed in section 3.4, so that the superiority of SI-3 to SI-0 is very distinct. SI-3 surely correlates to SiO2 content in
silicate rocks as shown in Figures 4 and 5, however, the correlation is not so well as the one of the other approach2.
Moreover, the intensity of SI-3 is significantly affected by the contrast loss in the spectral emissivity caused by
atmospheric downwelling radiance, macro and micro topography and the other effects which differs pixel by pixel and
is difficult to estimate, so that limited use of SI-3 in quantitative estimation of SiO2 content is expected. However, the
strong point of SI-3 is its applicability to ASTER level 1B data. Especially, SI-3 of intermediate silicate rocks are not so
much suffered by the effect of contrast loss because the spectral radiance of blackbody is not suffered by the effect at all
and the intermediate silicate rock has an almost same signature in SI-3 as blackbody (see Figure 18), so that the potential
ability of SI-3 in rock type mapping of silicate rocks into mafic-ultramafic, intermediate or felsic is expected.
CI for not normalized level 1B data (Figure 9) has an unstable property to clouds. Mostly, it indicates high intensity, but
sometimes it does low one. It indicates always high intensity to clouds for normalized CI (Figure 16). QI seems to
indicate the information of the surface even though clouds exist if they are not so dense.
In conclusion, the ability of QI, CI and SI-3 in a rock type mapping into 5 classes, that is, siliceous rock, carbonate rock,
mafic-ultramafic rock, intermediate rock and felsic rock, is pointed out. For more detailed quantitative mapping of SiO2
content, it needs another approach 2 using ASTER emissivity data product.

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 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Bihong Fu and Keyang Ma of Lanzhou Institute of Geology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, took an important part in
the field geological investigations to the study area. This is a fruit of the discussions with the ASTER science team
members, especially with H. Tonooka of Ibaraki Univ. on the atmospheric effect and with T. Cudahy on the spectral
property of rocks and minerals. The spectral emissivity is measured with micro-FTIR spectrometer owned by ERSDAC.

1.2 1.15

siliceous
1.15 siliceous
carbonate 1.1 carbonate
felsic
felsic
1.1 intermediate
intermediate
mafic
1.05 mafic
ultramafic
1.05 ultramafic
blackbody
blackbody
1
1

0.95 0.95
0 2000 4000 6000 8000 10000 0 2000 4000 6000 8000 10000
elevation (m) elevation (m)

Figure 14 QI against elevation with a standard Figure 15 CI against elevation. See the caption of
atmospheric model for the simulated ASTER level 1B Figure 14 for the details.
data of the samples (see the legend) at 300K. Error bars
are for setting sample temperature to 320K and 280K.

Figure 16 Images of CI with a normalization of brightness temperature at band 13 of level 1B data to 300K pixel by
pixel, for (a); “ASTER BS-1” to (f); “ASTER BS-6,” linearly gray-scaled between 0.7 and 1.0.

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 1.3 1.4

1.3
1.2
siliceous siliceous
carbonate 1.2 carbonate
1.1
felsic felsic
1.1
1 intermediate intermediate
mafic 1 mafic
0.9 ultramafic ultramafic
0.9
blackbody blackbody
0.8
0.8

0.7 0.7

0.6 0.6
0 2000 4000 6000 8000 10000 0 2000 4000 6000 8000 10000
elevation (m) elevation (m)

Figure 17 SI-0 against elevation. See the caption of Figure 18 SI-3 against elevation. See the caption of
Figure 14 for the details. Figure 14 for the details.

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