Lineament extraction from multi-resolution satellite imagery: a pilot study on Wadi Bani Malik, Jeddah, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia

Abstract

The study of structural lineaments is important for mineral exploration, geotectonic and geotechnical studies, and for the mitigation of geologic hazards. The present work deals with the extraction of lineaments from satellite imageries of different spatial resolutions as well as the analysis of these extracted lineaments. Wadi Bani Malik area located to the east of Jeddah city on the Red Sea coastal plain is chosen for such a study. Six types of digital satellite imagery data were used in the present study. These comprise satellite imagery of low spatial resolution (LSR) including Landsat MSS of 80-m resolution, Landsat TM of 30-m resolution, and Landsat TM of 25-m resolution; satellite imagery of moderate spatial resolution (MSR) including Landsat ETM+ panchromatic of 15-m resolution and SPOT panchromatic of 10-m resolution; and satellite imagery of high spatial resolution (HSR) including the Indian Remote Sensing satellite IRS data of 5-m resolution. As expected, the analysis of the extracted lineaments from different data sets shows that the imagery data of HSR of the Indian IRS data give the highest frequency of the extracted structural lineaments (N = 3,235), while the imagery data of LSR of the Landsat MSS data give the lowest frequency of the extracted lineaments (N = 89). The imagery data of MSR give moderate frequency (N = 1,643) in average. Due to the present study, it is recommended to use the imagery data of HSR and MSR for the extraction of structural lineaments for detailed and regional studies, respectively. The imagery data of LSR are not recommended for such studies due to the fact that most of the real structural lineaments framework cannot be extracted; accordingly, it is not useful in the analyses of lineaments for geological purposes.