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IMAGE PROCESSING AND ANALYSIS USING LANDSAT ETM + IMAGERY FOR

LITHOLOGICAL MAPPING AT FAWAKHIR, CENTRAL EASTERN DESERT OF EGYPT

Conference Paper · March 2009

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 IMAGE PROCESSING AND ANALYSIS USING LANDSAT ETM+ IMAGERY
FOR LITHOLOGICAL MAPPING AT FAWAKHIR,
CENTRAL EASTERN DESERT OF EGYPT
Reda Amer, PhD Student
Timothy Kusky, Paul C. Reinert, Professor and Chair of Natural Sciences
Abduwasit Ghulam, Research Professor
Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences and
Center for Environmental Sciences
Saint Louis University
St. Louis, MO 63103 USA
ramer@slu.edu
tkusky@gmail.com
awulamu@slu.edu

ABSTRACT
A data fusion technique is presented for lithological mapping in arid environments. Landsat Enhanced Thematic
Mapper (ETM+) visible (VIS), near-infrared (NIR) and infrared (IR) bands have been enhanced using image fusion
with a high spatial resolution panchromatic band of the same data set. The Hue, Saturation, and Value (HSV)
transform is used to convert RGB coordinates into the color coordinates (HSV). Later, Principal Component
Analysis (PCA) is applied on the fused (HSV) image for mapping ophiolitic and granitic rocks at Fawakhir in the
Central Eastern Desert of Egypt. A revised lithologic map of the Fawakhir area is proposed based on the
interpretation of Landsat ETM image results and field verification work. It is concluded that the proposed methods
have great potential for lithological mapping in arid and semi arid regions.

INTRODUCTION
Most of the Precambrian outcrops in Egypt are restricted to the area between the Nile and the Red Sea and the
adjacent southern Sinai Peninsula. The Fawakhir area is located 93 km west of the Red Sea coast, along the Qift-
Quseir highway in the Central Eastern Desert of Egypt at Lat. 26˚ 00′ 17″ N, and Long. 33˚ 35′ 42″ E (Fig. 1). The
Eastern Desert of Egypt is a part of the Pan-African Arabian-Nubian Shield, occupied by igneous and metamorphic
rocks that were formed during the evolution of the Mozambique Ocean and its closure culminating in the East
African Orogeny marking the collision between East and West Gondwana and the closure of the Mozambique
Ocean 600 Ma ago (Stern, 1994; Kusky et al., 2003). The Central Eastern Desert is almost exclusively built up of
island arc magmatic rocks, ophiolitic mélange and associated rocks, together with subordinate molasse-type
sediments and late-tectonic volcanics and granitoid intrusives (El Ramly et al., 1993). The Fawakhir area is occupied
mainly by ophiolitic mélange represented by serpentinites, metagabbro, and metabasalt, then intruded by granitic
rocks, and overlain by Hammamat sediments. The Fawakhir granite pluton hosts El Sid and El Fawakhir Gold
Mines, which are two of several gold mines in the Eastern Desert of Egypt that have been extensively worked since
Pharaonic and Roman times (Amer et al., 2008).
Remote sensing techniques have been used successfully in lithological mapping for the Arabian Nubian shield
and for other areas worldwide by several authors (e.g. Abrams et al., 1983 & 1988; Sultan et al., 1986; Sabins, 1997;
Abdelsalam and Stern, 1999; Rowan et al., 2003 Gad and Kusky 2006). Sultan et al., (1986) used Landsat TM RGB
band ratios (5/7, 5/1, 5/4 * 3/4) for mapping serpentinites in the Eastern Desert of Egypt. Landsat ETM band ratio
images (5/3, 5/1, 7/5) in RGB and (7/5, 5/4, 3/1) in RGB Gad and Kusky, (2006) are used for mapping serpentinites
in the Barramiya area in the Central Eastern Desert of Egypt. Amer et al., (2008) proposed new ASTER band ratios
((2+4)/3, (5+7)/6, (7+9)/8) in RGB by analysis of the image spectra of the ophiolitic rocks at Fawakhir, Central
Eastern Desert of Egypt. They also used the Principal Component Analysis (5, 4, 2) in RGB of ASTER image to
present a revised lithologic map of the Fawakhir area.

ASPRS 2009 Annual Conference

Baltimore, Maryland Š March 9-13, 2009
 Figure 1. Location of the Fawakhir area on a Landsat image of Egypt.

This study aims to further explore new methods for lithological mapping in arid and semiarid regions using
Landsat ETM+ images. The method involves enhancing the data quality of low spatial resolution (30 m) VIS/NIR
and IR Landsat ETM+ bands by fusion with higher resolution (15 m) panchromatic band (8). Principal Component
Analysis and histogram equalization are applied on the fused data for mapping the ophiolitic and granitic rocks of
the Fawakhir area in the Central Eastern Desert of Egypt. Herein we present a revised lithological map that shows
major differences in the distribution and rock units’ boundaries from the published lithologic map of Hassanen
(1985) (Fig. 2).

Figure 2. Geological map of Fawakhir area (Hassanen 1985).

ASPRS 2009 Annual Conference
Baltimore, Maryland Š March 9-13, 2009
 GEOLOGIC SETTING

The Fawakhir is covered mainly by ophiolitic and granitic rocks. These rocks are traversed by quartz veins
striking nearly NE-SW where El Sid and Fawakhir gold mines are located. The Fawakhir ophiolitie sequence is
composed mainly of serpentinites, metagabbros, and metabasalts (El-Sayed et al., 1999). The ophiolite is intruded
by post-emplacement younger granites and later basic to acidic dykes that cut all of the Fawakhir ophiolite units.
The serpentinite rocks form a large envelope around the Fawakhir granitoid pluton and are regarded as a
member of an ophiolitic sequence developed in a supra-subduction zone setting (El-Mezayen, 1983). The basal
contact between the serpentinite and the underlying mélange rocks is sharp and marked by a deep thrust fault
striking NNW-SSE and a relatively narrow band of dark green schistose amphibolite is located between the
ultramafic and the mélange zone (Hassanen, 1985). The interpretation of Landsat ETM and field work showed that
the ophiolitic member serpentinite is surrounding the Fawakhir granitoid pluton from the west, north and south but
there is no serpentinite in the most of the eastern side. To the west of serpentinite Dokhan volcanics and Hammamat
sediments crop out. To the east and south of the Fawakhir granitoid pluton the ophiolitic members’ metagabbros and
metabasalts are exposed as elongate bodies crossing the main asphaltic road and thrust over the serpentinites (Fig.
3). The Fawakhir granitoid pluton has intruded the ophiolitic thrust sheets and is composed of two compositionally
distinct granitic phases: an earlier grey monzodiorite phase intruded with sharp contact by a larger pink mainly
monzogranite phase (Fowler, 2001).

Serp

Gr Gr
Serp Mb

a b

Quartz Vein

Gd
Mg

c d

Figure 3. Field Photographs at Wadi Al Sid showing: (a) Clear granite apophyses (Gr) in serpentinite (Serp);
Looking N. (b) Structural contact between serpentinite (Serp) and metabasalts (Mb); Looking W. (c) Intrusive
contact between monzogranite (Mg) and granodiorite (Gd); Looking SW. (d): Al Sid gold mine; Looking NE.

ASPRS 2009 Annual Conference

Baltimore, Maryland Š March 9-13, 2009
 DATA USED

Landsat Enhanced Thematic Mapper ETM+ has 9 spectral bands. These include three visible bands (1-3)
between 0.4 and 0.7 µm and one near infrared NIR band (4) between 0.76-0.90 µm and two infrared IR bands (5 and
7) between 1.55 and 2.35 µm, and one panchromatic band 8 between 0.52-9.0 μm; in addition to two thermal
infrared bands (61 and 62) between 10.40 and 12.5 µm. Landsat ETM+ spectral bands have a spatial resolution of 30
meters for bands 1 to 5 and band 7. The resolution for band 6 (thermal infrared) is 60 meters and resolution for band
(8 panchromatic) is 15 meters.

METHODOLOGY

Image Fusion Technique

Image fusion techniques deal with integration of complementary and redundant information from multiple
images to create a composite image that contains a better description of the scene (Wen and Chen, 2004). The fusion
of two data sets can be done in order to obtain one single data set with the qualities of both (Saraf, 1999). Image
fusion is a method to enhance the quality and spatial resolution of an image by combining the spectral information
of low spatial resolution imagery with high spatial resolution imagery. The resultant image has high spectral
resolution and the same quality as a high spatial resolution image. In this study we applied image fusion techniques
to the same data type. The low spatial resolution (30 m) Landsat ETM VIS/NIR and IR spectral bands are combined
with the high resolution (15 m) Landsat ETM+ panchromatic (band 8).
The low spatial resolution (30 m) Landsat ETM VIS/NIR and IR image is resized into (15m) spatial resolution.
Spectral bands (7, 4, 2) are selected to be RGB coordinates. The Hue, Saturation, and Value (HSV) transform is
used to convert RGB coordinates into the color coordinates (HSV). Hue ranges from 0-360, where 0 and 360 = blue,
120 = green, and 240 = red. Saturation ranges from 0 to 208 with higher numbers representing more pure colors.
Value ranges from approximately 0 to 512 with higher numbers representing brighter colors (Kruse and Raines,
1994). HSV transform replace the value band with the high-resolution image, automatically resample the hue and
saturation bands to the high-resolution pixel size using a nearest neighbor, bilinear, or cubic convolution technique,
and finally transform the image back to RGB color space (Welch and Ahlers, 1987). The output HSV image has a
wide range of color with pixel size of 15 m (Fig. 4).

Principal Components Analysis (PCA)

Principal components analysis (PCA) allows redundant data to be compacted into fewer bands so the
dimensionality of the data is reduced (Fig. 5). An important advantage of PCA is that most of the information within
all the bands (represented by the variance) can be compressed into a much smaller number of bands with little loss
of information (Gibson and Power 2000). The bands of PCA data are noncorrelated and independent, and are often
more interpretable than the source data (Jensen, 1996). Because multispectral data bands are often highly correlated,
PCA transformation is used to produce uncorrelated output bands. The first PCA band contains the largest
percentage of data variance and the second PCA band contains the second largest data variance, and so on; the last
PCA bands appear noisy because they contain very little variance, much of which is due to noise in the original
spectral data. PCA bands produce more colorful color composite images than spectral color composite images
because the data are uncorrelated (Richards, 1999). PCA is applied to the fused image the resulting image has high
spatial resolution and a wide range of color that make the different lithological units easily discriminated (Fig. 6).

RESULTS AND CONCLUSION

The results of this study demonstrate that the image fusion using Hue, Saturation, and Value (HSV) transform is
very helpful in the image interpretation. Principal Component Analysis (PCA) of the fused image demonstrates
better effectiveness in mapping different rock units in the Fawakhir area (Fig. 6). Serpentinites are identified by blue
colors, metagabbros have green colors, metabasalts have pale blue colors, grey granite has brown colors and pink
granite has a pale green color. PCA image shows better discrimination between different rock units. Field data are
subsequently used together with the results of visual interpretation of the PCA image to prepare a detailed geological

ASPRS 2009 Annual Conference

Baltimore, Maryland Š March 9-13, 2009
map for the Fawakhier area (Fig. 7). Comparison between the results of PCA of Landsat ETM fused image and the
published geologic maps showed differences of distribution and boundaries of some lithological units.
This paper demonstrates new and effective techniques for using Landsat ETM+ images for lithological mapping
in arid regions like the Fawakhir area in the Central Eastern Desert of Egypt. The image fusion techniques comprises
enhancement of the image quality and spatial resolution using Hue, Saturation, and Value (HSV) transform and
applying the Principal Component Analysis PCA on the fused image. The resultant image is used to distinguish
between ophiolitic rocks which include (serpentinite, metagabbro, and metabasalt) and granitic rocks (grey and pink
granites). It is recommended to use the HSV transform for image fusion and applying PCA on the fused image for
better discrimination between different rock units. Comparison between the results derived from the proposed new
methods and field work clearly show that the new methods were successful in lithological mapping of the Fawakhir
area. Therefore, we suggest that these techniques may be used as time- and cost-effective approaches for lithological
mapping in the Arabian–Nubian shield and other arid areas.

Figure 4. Landsat ETM+ Hue, Saturation, and Value (HSV) fused image.

ASPRS 2009 Annual Conference

Baltimore, Maryland Š March 9-13, 2009
 A B

Figure 5. 2-D scatter plot of: (A) Landsat ETM+ Hue, Saturation, and Value (HSV) fused image. (B) Principal
Component Analysis (PCA) reduced the data dimensionality of HSV image.

Figure 6. Principal Component Analysis (PCA) of Landsat ETM+ fused image.

ASPRS 2009 Annual Conference
Baltimore, Maryland Š March 9-13, 2009
 Figure 7. Lithological map of Fawakhir area, Central Eastern Desert of Egypt.

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