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Methodology for the Extraction and Analysis of Geological Lineaments Using

Remote Sensing and Free Software

Conference Paper · October 2022

DOI: 10.1109/CONESCAPAN56456.2022.9959500

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 Methodology for the Extraction and Analysis of
Geological Lineaments Using Remote Sensing and
Free Software
Adonnis Rodrı́guez
School of Electrical Engineering
Universidad de El Salvador
San Salvador, El Salvador
adonnis@ieee.org
Kelly Quintanilla
School of Electrical Engineering
Universidad de El Salvador
San Salvador, El Salvador
QB15001@ues.edu.sv
Krissia Cortez
School of Electrical Engineering
Universidad de El Salvador
San Salvador, El Salvador
CM17006@ues.edu.sv

Abstract—The study of geological lineaments has a great sci- significantly brighter or darker than background pixels. Such
entific interest, these control the distribution of regional ground- lineaments include: faults and fractures that have obvious
water, geological hazards, geothermal energy, earthquakes, etc. displacement, ruptures that do not have significant fracture
The technology of extraction of geological lineaments is of
great importance for the analysis of the movement of regional displacement (e.g., junction zones, cleavage belts, structural
plates and oil, gas and hydrogeology exploration. However, these fissures, and tectonic crush zones), large crustal fractures, deep
technologies are dominated by licensed software, in this paper faults, buried faults, linear microstructures, geomorphological
a semi-automatic methodology is proposed using free software, features, and linear traces that reflect abnormal hues[1][2]
taking asa study area the geothermal prospectus of the Paka
volcano, located in the center of the Rift of Kenya with the II. M ETHODOLOGY
help of images from the Landsat 8 OLI Satellite and a DEM
obtained from the ALOS PALSAR sensor of the ASF satellite. In order to identify the main sets of lineaments and deter-
The experimental results showed that the orientation of the mine the geological contacts in the study area, three different
lineaments was dominated by NNE – SSW complemented by kinds of data were used and processed to emphasize the
NE – SW. Under the influence of Kenya’s Rift regional fault,
the lineaments were distributed mainly over linear landforms, spatial and spectral features of the study area: geological map,
coinciding with previous studies in the area. landsat 8 satellite spectral bands and a digital elevation model
Index Terms—Geological lineaments, remote sensing, Landsat ALOS PALSAR[3]. From the landsat 8 satellite, the bands
8 OLI, ALOS PALSAR, Paka Volcano. of the visible spectrum, near infrared and the panchromatic
band were used, which cover from 0.45 - 2.29 µm of the
I. I NTRODUCTION electromagnetic spectrum without including the cirrus band
(1.36 - 1.38 µm)[4]
It is known that the first incursions into the world of remote
sensing date back to 1859, when Gaspard Felix de Tournachon
managed to obtain the first aerial photographic images from
a captive balloon. James Wallace, the following year, tried
to replicate Tournachon’s experiment but this time about the
city of Boston and this last achievement highlighted the great
interest and potential of the new aerial perspective for a more
detailed knowledge of urban organization. The application
of these innovations was later developed for civilian uses,
developing the first applications of this aerial exploration for
the control and knowledge of natural resources. At the end
of the 50s, the development of navigation systems made it
possible to conceive the first space inventions. The so-called
Fig. 1. Methodology proposed and developed for the extraction of lineaments
”Cold War” directed one of its preferred targets into space: of geological origin
the Soviet satellite Sputnik in 1957. From this advance, it is
followed by a long series of civilian and military missions,
which have allowed not only the exploration of the Planet, but A. Preprocessing
also of the Moon and neighboring planets.In satellite imagery, The OLI image used corresponds to path 169 and Row
geological lines appear as linear lines or structures that are 59 of August 24, 2021, and corresponds to a C1 level 1
978-1-6654-5353-0/22/$31.00 ©2022 IEEE product with terrain correction and with coordinates projected
to UTM Zone 37 N with WGS84 datum.The preprocessing
of the scene included the conversion of digital levels (ND)
to spectral radiance values and the atmospheric correction
from the DOS (Dark Object Substaction) method proposed by
Chavez[5]. The DOS method is an image-based atmospheric
correction technique which assumes that the radiance in areas
of poor reflectivity is due to the effect of atmospheric dis-
persion, the latter being subtracted from each of the bands.
The atmospheric correction was performed to eliminate the
effects of atmospheric dispersion that affects mostly short
wavelengths, an additional dispersion to the signals reflected
by surface objects generates a decrease in the contrast of the
bands of the visible and near infrared spectrum that in terms
of Lineament extraction can mask relevant linear features.
B. Prosecution
The data processing was carried out in the free software
QGIS is a Geographic Information System (GIS) with modules
such as SAGA (System for Automated Geoscientific Aanal-
yses) and GRASS (Geographic Resources Analysis Support
System), which allows visualizing, processing and building
complex spatial analysis because they have work environ-
ments that have advanced tools. In this case, the SCP (Semi-
automatic classification plugin) module created by Congedo[6]
was used.
C. Combination of bands
It is possible to select one or several spectral bands of Land-
sat 8 to create a clearer image according to the needs specified
according to the type of investigation. The opportunity offered
is to replace the true color of the image with the required color.
• The normal RGB of visible light can be obtained by
combining bands 2, 3 and 4 (blue, green and red filters).
• The panchromatic (black and white) is obtained from
band 8, and that collects the largest possible number
of spectra in a single channel, which allows for clearer
images than any other.
• The false RGB is obtained by combining bands 5, 4 and 3,
which would allow us to more easily observe vegetation,
urban areas and bodies of water.
• Deep blue is obtained from band 1 which is useful for
monitoring coastlines as well as distinguishing dust and
smoke particles in the air.
• Bands 6 and 7 use different parts of the shortwave
infrared and are useful for monitoring rock and soil.
D. PCA
Principal component analysis (PCA) is a statistical method
that generates images of decreasing variance keeping the high-
est significant components to represent the whole image; It is
useful to highlight the spatial frequency of rectilinear features
as a direct result of the high correlation that exists between the
linear features that make up all multispectral bands[7]. In this
sense, the recognition of lineaments works from the analysis
of the spatial frequency, which is defined by the changes
in the brightness value per unit area. Homogeneous and
heterogeneous zones with respect to their pitch are called low
and high spatial frequencies, respectively[8]. These changes
in the brightness value are related to the spectral response of
the evaluated surface, and can occur in areas where there are
rapid changes in coverage, for example, in areas that graduate
from bare ground cover to forest cover, likewise, in areas with
topographic changes and abrupt elevations expressions such as
geological faults[9]
E. Spatial Filtering
Spatial filters are methods of transforming and enhancing
an image in the spatial domain, and work from operations
between a mobile convolution matrix (kernel) and a raster
based on their brightness values, taking into account the
spatial interdependence between adjacent pixels ( neighbor-
hoods)[9].Directional filters are linear filters that operate in the
same way and have N-S, E-W, NW-SE, and NE-SW directions
[10][11]. Algebraically they can be represented according to
[12] by the following equation:
XX
r(i, j) = ϕ(m, n) ∗ t(m, n) (1)
m n
where r(i, j) is the output image, ϕ(m, n) represents the
original brightness values according to their position, t(m, n)
is the convolution matrix with center at (i, j). Taking into
account the above, the convolution matrices that were used as
directional filters are the following:
   
−1 0 1 −1 −1 −1  0 1 1
−1 0 1 0 0 0 −1 0 1
−1 0 1 1 1 1 −1 −1 0
   

1 1 0

1 0 −1 (2)

0 −1 −1

N − S, E − W, N W − SE, N E − SW respectively
F. Lineaments Extraction
The techniques for the extraction and analysis of geological
lineaments through geomatics have two approaches [13][14].A
first approach is the so-called manual extraction method, in
which the extraction is performed by interpreting and digitiz-
ing on a monitor[14]. The second approach is the automatic
extraction method, which consists of the application of digital
image processing techniques (TPDI) and extraction using lin-
ear extraction algorithms[13][15][11]. These two approaches
have notable differences, ranging from the availability of tools
to the time involved in each. In our case we use an automatic
extraction resulting in Fig. 2.
G. Digital Elevation Model DEM
A digital elevation model (DEM) is the digital represen-
tation of the elevation of the earth’s surface with respect to
a given datum.This is frequently used to refer to any digital
representation of a topographical surface and is the simplest
form of digital representation of topography.The DEM used
is an ASF RTC (Alask Satellite Facility Radiometric Terrain
Correction) product with a resolution of 12.5 m per pixel.
 Aperture, from positive and negative aperture.

Dif f erentialOpenness =
P ositiveOpenness − negativeOpenness
(3)
2
Merging the Differential Aperture with a red gradient shading
leads to so-called red relief image maps. These RRIMs, as well
as combinations of differential aperture and shadow images,
proved very useful for highlighting morphological features and
geomorphological mapping[17]. As shown in Fig.4

Fig. 2. Geological lineaments of the Paka Volcano

H. Altitudinal Reclassification

The information that can be gathered from high-resolution

DEM datasets is highly dependent on visualization meth-
ods.Among the most common visualization methods are shad-
ing techniques, such as hill shading. However, in hillshade Fig. 4. Example of a Red Relief from Aperture and Shadow Differential
images, features may be obscured due to their appearance, Images taken from [21]
and small height differences may not be visible unless vertical
exaggeration is used [16].Although there are improvements
and solutions such as multidirectional shading, they still do I. Rose Diagram
not manage to exploit all the information stored in DEMs, Using the QGIS[22] line direction histogram plugin, the
especially when it comes to mapping small-scale topogra- rose plot was obtained Fig. 5. This shows the trends of the
phies. [17][18] introduced (topographic) aperture as a new geological lineaments.
topographical attribute, which is independent of a light source
and helps visualize concavities and convexities of prominent
surfaces. Aperture is defined as the mean of multiple (usually
8) zenith or nadir angles (given in radians) within a defined
horizontal distance from each DEM cell. therefore, it repre-
sents the enclosure of a DEM cell As shown in Fig. 3.

Fig. 3. Conceptual visualization of topographic aperture (a) The zenith angle

and the nadir angle are calculated along multiple (in our house always 8)
azimuths (D) within the radial limit L. [18] (b) The concept of aperture
positive and negative as shown in [19]. Fig. 5. Rose Diagram

Chiba [20] calculated a new parameter, later called Differential

 Fig. 6. Geological lineaments map, red relief map and rose diagram of Paka Volcano
J. Final product
linking the geological lineaments map and the red relief
map we obtain a better result to analyze the lineaments and
be able to rule out a false positive
C ONCLUSIONS
The generation of the map of geological lineaments from
satellite images greatly facilitates the work that is traditionally
done in situ, converting the work of months and perhaps even
years into a few hours of work. In addition to the fact that this
can be done with free software, it allows it to be available to
all those interested in these products.
The experimental results showed that the orientation of the
lineaments was dominated by NNE – SSW complemented
by NE – SW. Coinciding with the dominant fault that is the
Kenyan rift, so the proposed methodology has a high degree
of reliability.
A weakness of this methodology is the presence of clouds
in the scenes of the landsat 8 satellite, since they are optical
products it depends directly on the discovered sky, but since
geological faults are being analyzed, and these do not usually
change in short periods of time, scenes can be used not so
recent for the generation of lineaments maps. The lineaments
generated with this methodology correspond to geological
faults that have to do with the architecture of the basement.
The lines almost orthogonal to these correspond mostly to
geomorphological guidelines produced by fluvial denundation.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
We want to express our most sincere gratitude to Dr. Carlos
Pocasangre and to the laboratory colleagues who collaborated
in this investigation Carlos Luna and Daniel Henriquez.
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