DiRT
Exploration
thermal
Variations in emissivity is related to the thermal inertia of rocks and soils and can be derived from night-time ASTER imagery (90m resolution). Anomalously high areas of emissivity have been shown to be associated with alteration and mineral deposits. Here are some examples.
Gold in vegetated terrains - Northern Ireland.
Copper
Gold in aird terrains - Eritrea.
The Morenci copper mine is located in Arizona. Morenci represents one of the largest copper reserves in the world, having estimated reserves of 3.2 billion tonnes of ore grading 0.16% copper.
The world's largest zinc mine is called Red Dog in Alaska. It comes associated with a decent emissivity anomaly.
Zinc
Diamonds
The Kelsey Lake diamond mine in Colorado stands out like the proverbials in an emissivity image on Landsat 8 data.
A synoptic view shows a huge mantle burn of emissivity anomalies trending from the North West to South East. It's like a replay of the Slave deposits in Canada.
Uranium
Smith Ranch and Highland are two uranium mines located in Wyoming, U.S.A. They mine as a single operation, and have one central processing facility. Smith Ranch-Highland is the largest uranium production facility in the United States.
Rare earths
Pea Ridge is a dormant iron ore mine an hour southwest of St. Louis, Missouri.
This dormant mine holds a deposit of something that lies at the heart of our increasingly high-tech world: rare-earth elements, used in everything from cellphones to missile systems to hybrid cars. The Missouri mine is one of the few places in the world where such an abundant deposit of rare earths has been found.
Rare-earth metals are 15 elements with atomic numbers 57 to 71 on the periodic table, as well as scandium and yttrium. The metals themselves amount to a $3 billion global industry, but they are essential to the production of $5 trillion worth of goods.
Silver
The Coeur d’Alene (Silver Valley) district of Shoshone County in northern Idaho is one of the top three silver districts in the world in total silver produced. Several mines north of Burke are associated with emissivity anomalies, shown below on Landsat 8 data.
Gold again
Emissivity anomalies at Cripple Creek shown on Landsat 8 data may be used to generate targets in brownfields exploration.
We've also found emissivity anomalies associated with onshore gas seeps in Papua New Guinea as well as hydrocarbons in Namibia and Mozambique.
We've mapped epithermal gold in Cambodia and Alaska and coalbed methane in Wyoming. If you're looking for a mineral deposit, we're at your disposal.
Lamproites
The Leucite Hills in Wyoming are the largest lamproite field in the world. Lamproites are rare igneous rocks which have geochemical signatures similar to those of kimberlite. Interest in lamproites has increased since the discovery of Argyle, a diamond deposit in an olivine lamproite in Western Australia.
The Leucite Hills volcanic field consists of 22 known lamproite flows, dikes, necks, plugs, and cinder cones. Volcanic activity began about 3.1 million years ago, and continued until approximately 1 million years ago. They have a distinct thermal emissivity signature.
Oil
Louisiana’s oil industry started on September 21, 1901, with the discovery of oil near Jennings. The Jules Clement No.1 was a spectacular well, spraying
7000 barrels of oil per day into the air. This was just 9 months after oil had been discovered near Beaumont, Texas, at Spindletop. Spindletop
and Jennings started an “oil rush” that continues to this day.
Thermal emissivity can be used as a direct technique for onshore oil exploration as the sequence of images at increasing spatial resolution, confirms.
