Hydrothermal Alteration Mapping Using ASTER Data for Reconnaissance Porphyry Copper Mineralization in the Ahar Area, NW Iran

The Ahar area is located in East Azarbaijan province, and covers an area of about 2,500 km². Spectral mapping techniques were applied on VNIR and SWIR of ASTER data for discriminating between hydrothermal alteration zones and the identification of high potential mineralized lithological unit associated with hydrothermal porphyry copper mineralization in the Ahar. In this research to remove atmospheric and topographic effects from ASTER data, the log-residual method (LRM) was used. Four methods, Relative Band Depth Ratios (RBD), Principal Component Analysis (PCA), Minimum Noise Fraction (MNF) and matched filtering (MF), were used to processing and interpretation of remote sensing data in the study area. Results show that ASTER images provide preliminary mineralogy information and geo-referenced alteration maps at low cost and with high accuracy for reconnaissance porphyry copper mineralizations.