Identification of the Metallic-Element Anomalies in Baluqaya Region Using Remote Sensing and Comparison of the Results with Geochemical Data

Northwestern part of Iran is one of the important metal bearing zones and the Baluqaya region which is one of the interesting parts of this area, was selected as the study area. In this research the endmembers were extracted from ASTER dataset and then were compared with spectral library to find matching reference minerals for them. Subsequently, the abundances of endmembers were exracted using the matched filtering technique. Then, the classification and distribution maps of minerals were extracted by implementing the floating threshold as a novel technique on endmembers abundance maps. The mineralogical data of the study area are also involved in the floating threshold method. This method classifies areas with high abundance values of endmembers that probabily have high potential for mineralization. The results delineated argillic and advanced argillic alterations at the midwest of the study area. By performing of robust principal component analysis (RPCA) on ICP-MS geochemical data, correlation of gold concentrations with that of antimony and arsenic was detected in the remote sensing derived alteration area. Finally, it is concluded that a possible high sulfidation epithermal mineralization system has developed in the study area