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Imaging of hydrothermal altered zones in Wadi Al-Bana, in southern Yemen, using remote sensing techniques and very low frequency–electromagnetic data

  • ArabGU2016
  • Published:
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Abstract

Economic mineralization and hydrothermally altered zones are areas of great economic interests. This study focusses on hydrothermal altered zones of high mineralization potentials in Wadi Al-Bana, in southern Yemen. An azimuthal very low frequency–electromagnetic (AVLF-EM) data acquisition was conducted in search for mineralization in the study area. The study integrated observations from geophysical field data with others extracted from object-oriented principal component analysis (PCA) to better map and understand mineralization in the investigated area. This technique was applied to two data sets, ASTER and Landsat 8 Operational Land Imager (OLI) imagery. The results of PCA revealed high accuracy in detecting alteration minerals and for mapping zones of high concentration of these minerals. The PCA-based distribution of selected alteration zones correlated spatially with high conductivity anomalies in the subsurface that were detected by VLF measurements. Finally, a GIS model was built and successfully utilized to categorize the resulted altered zones, into three levels.

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Acknowledgments

The authors deeply thank the anonymous editors and reviewers for their precious comments and advice to improve the research paper quality as well as Dr. Tarek A. Barakat, Civil Engineering Department, Faculty of Engineering, Sana’a University, for his support and facilitating the field trips.

Funding

UAE Space Agency for time funding grant number Z01-2016-001.6

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Geophysics Department, Faculty of Science, Ain Shams University, Abbassia, Cairo, 11566, Egypt

    Karam S. I. Farag

  2. College of Natural and Health Sciences, Zayed University, Abu Dhabi, UAE

    Fares M. Howari

  3. Geology Department, Faculty of Science, Ain Shams University, Abbassia, Cairo, 11566, Egypt

    Karim W. Abdelmalik

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  1. Karam S. I. Farag
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  3. Karim W. Abdelmalik
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Correspondence to Karim W. Abdelmalik.

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This article is part of the Topical Collection on Current Advances in Geology of North Africa

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Farag, K.S.I., Howari, F.M. & Abdelmalik, K.W. Imaging of hydrothermal altered zones in Wadi Al-Bana, in southern Yemen, using remote sensing techniques and very low frequency–electromagnetic data. Arab J Geosci 12, 554 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12517-019-4702-8

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