A comparative study for unmixing based Landsat ETM+ and ASTER image fusion

The mineral environment of the Bouaouane–Jebel (Hill) Hallouf mine, in the north of Tunisia, is monitored and analyzed by making use of the laboratory analysis and remote sensing images, ETM+ as well as ASTER VNIR and SWIR data, acquired in the same period. The main contribution of this paper consists of a methodology using multispectral multi-sensor fusion for the refinement of the mine tailing cartography around the studied mine. The developed methodology is based on the linear spectral unmixing approach which is applied to a multispectral hybrid image. This image was generated from the fusion of Landsat ETM+ and ASTER SWIR data. A comparative study is made between the hybrid and ASTER (VNIR and SWIR) images classification with respect to laboratory analysis. The given results show that the fusion of Landsat ETM+ and ASTER SWIR multispectral image yields the best mineral detection.