Vnir-Swir Superspectral Mineral Mapping: An Example From Cuprite, Nevada

Cuprite, Nevada, is a location well known for numerous studies of its hydrothermal mineralogy. This region has been used to validate geological interpretations of airborne hyperspectral imagery (Awns HSI), Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer (ASTER) imagery, and most recently eight-band World View-3 shortwave infrared (swift) imagery. World View-3 is a high-spatial-resolution commercial multispectral satellite sensor with eight visibleto-near-infrared (vNIR) bands (0.42-1.04 mu m) and eight SWIR bands (1.2-2.33 mu m). We have applied mineral mapping techniques to all 16 bands to perform a geological analysis of the Cuprite, Nevada, location. Ground truth for the training and validation was derived from AVIRIS hyperspectral data and United States Geological Survey mineral spectral data for this location. We present the results of a supervised mineral-mapping classification applying a random-forest classifier. Our results show that with good ground truth, World View-3 SWIR + VNIR imagery produces an accurate geological assessment.