LANDSAT DIGITAL ENHANCEMENTS FOR LINEAMENT DETECTION

Identification of lineaments has important ramifications in geology because lineaments can signify zones of both hazardous potential and economically valuable environments. Five enhancement techniques are applied to Landsat digital data for lineament detection: (1) mean value of all four bands, (2) principal components, (3) band ratio, (4) histogram equalization, and (5) high-pass digital filtering. Of the five enhancement techniques evaluated, the principal components analysis identified the greatest number of lineaments and the greatest total length of the lineaments. All five techniques identified a significant amount of unique lineaments, which were not found by any other technique. Unique lineaments identified by each technique are combined through a composite process yielding a lineament interpretation which exceeds the detection capability of the principal components interpretation.