Geological Application of HySpex Ground Hyperspectral Remote Sensing in Gold and Uranium Ore Deposits

Abstract—Hyperspectral remote sensing is a frontier field of remote sensing due to its advantage of object recognition based on spectral characteristics. This study carried out geological application of HySpex ground-based hyperspectral data at scales of both alteration belt in the Asiha gold district of Qinghai Province, and core in Xiangshan uranium deposit of Jiangxi Province. After data preprocessing, eight kinds of hydrothermal alteration minerals, such as hematite, sericite and illite, were extracted by the MTMF mapping method based on expert knowledge. Then, three alteration zones were divided in the gold deposit and six alteration zones were divided in the uranium core. The alteration minerals types, combination and distribution were further analyzed. It is concluded that alteration minerals closely related to the gold mineralization are limonite and sericite, and those closely associated with the uranium mineralization are hematite, illite and chlorite. Thus, HySpex data have a widespread prospect in basic geology survey and mineral exploration, for that their high spatial resolution can generate large-scale images, and that their high spectral resolution can identify alteration minerals. Keywords- HySpex; alteration minerals mapping; ground-based hyperspectral; gold and uranium; geological application I