Checking exploration patterns of iron skarn deposits using ETM+ satellite image in northeastern Delijan

The study area is located in northeastern Delijan, in Urumieh Dokhtar magmatic belt Central Iran and consists of Intrusive, subvolcanic, volcanic, Sedimentary and Pyroclastic rocks. emplacement of intrusion in Carbonate sedimentary and Pyroclastic rocks caused iron skarn mineralization and alteration of the host rocks. Remote sensing method is used to investigate the alteration zones and evaluate the patterns of iron skarn mineralization by using different processing on satellite images of Landsat ETM sensor. Accordingly, band ratio, principal component analysis and matched filtering methods are the best algorithms to observe alteration zones, and colour composite, Crosta technique and LS-Fit algorithm methods can provide acceptable results for iron minerals detection. These Remote Sensing methods are recommended to determine alteration zones and find iron minerals in general exploration, also because of clay alteration isn’t associated with skarn deposits, this type of alteration is not useful in iron skarn exploration.