The Identification and Geological Significance of Fault Buried in the Gasikule Salt Lake in China based on the Multi‐source Remote Sensing Data

Abstract

AbstractThe salinity of the salt lake is an important factor to evaluate whether it contains some mineral resources or not, the fault buried in the salt lake could control the abundance of the salinity. Therefore, it is of great geological importance to identify the fault buried in the salt lake. Taking the Gasikule Salt Lake in China for example, the paper established a new method to identify the fault buried in the salt lake based on the multi‐source remote sensing data including Landsat TM, SPOT‐5 and ASTER data. It includes the acquisition and selection of the multi‐source remote sensing data, data preprocessing, lake waterfront extraction, spectrum extraction of brine with different salinity, salinity index construction, salinity separation, analysis of the abnormal salinity and identification of the fault buried in salt lake, temperature inversion of brine and the fault verification. As a result, the study identified an important fault buried in the east of the Gasikule Salt Lake that controls the highest salinity abnormal. Because the level of the salinity is positively correlated to the mineral abundance, the result provides the important reference to identify the water body rich in mineral resources in the salt lake.