Utilization of multispectral landsat-8 remote sensing data for lithological mapping of southwestern Saudi Arabia

Abstract

The upper plutonic rocks in southwestern Saudi Arabia has been mapped through Landsat 8 Operational Land Imager (OLI) data. The gathered field rock samples were subjected to spectral measurements (in the range of 0.4–2.5 µm) in the laboratory using a GER 3700 spectroradiometer. Integrated remote sensing techniques, including the band ratio, principal component analysis (PCA), and Gram-Schmidt spectral sharpening have been applied through this study. The red–greenblue composites of the pan-sharpened original bands (3, 4, and 7), principal components (PC3, PC1, and PC2), and band ratios 5/6 and 5/7 were found to be the most useful to delineate the study area’s Upper Proterozoic plutonic rocks. The results of image processing methods, spectral reflectance analyses are in good agreement with the field data. The spectral reflectance curves of the collected samples and the corresponding Landsat 8 pixels match well. It is indicated that Landsat-8 image data has great capability to identify lithological units and could be applicable in several areas in arid and semiarid environments.