Enhancement and Detection of Koopan Laterites (Zagros, Iran), Based on Landsat satellite Data

Koopan regional laterites located in North East of Shiraz, Fars province.The rock strata, Koopan Laterits set on Neyriz ophiolites that these ophiolites are actually part of a series Zagros ophiolite with of Upper Cretaceous age. These laterites are covered with Nummulitic limestone equivalent Jahrom formation with Eocene age. The lateritization should be occurred after the Upper Cretaceous in which case it can be assumed Paleocene age for this event. The aim of the current study, detection of Koopan regional laterites has been by remote sensing techniques. For this purpose LANDSAT images were prepared and pre-processed.The geographical location of the rock units was recorded by GPS. Then, in the main processing, using the spectral reflectance curves of laterite, used to identify the best Colour combinations. This study showed that the combination of RGB = 321 for the red laterite and also the yellow laterite is the best detection to follow. Principal component analysis (PCA) method that with all the bands as well as the enhancement on them was performed the best difference for detection and enhancement of Laterits was followed and finally by using the training field points and the use of standard PCA, operations supervised classification done that studies indicated supervised classification method with Maximum Likelihood algorithm associated with the greatest enhancement.