Comparative analysis of SAR sensors for effective tectonic lineament mapping in semiarid region

Abstract

The progression and refinement of remote sensing techniques now allow the extraction of geological lineaments without traditional methods. This study aims to detect lineaments using Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) data from three sensors with different bands: Alos-Palsar, Radarsat-1, and Sentinel-1. Automatic lineament extraction is performed by combining two different parameters along with the Palsar Digital Elevation Model in order to recommend the most powerful sensor for this task. The methodology involves relating the length, number, orientation, and density of lineaments to surface features such as slope, lithology, and discontinuities. The results of this evaluation show that the lineaments obtained of both polarizations of sentinel correlate better with geological units, the orientation of the tectonic system, shadow and slope maps. This is attributable to the high efficiency of VH polarization, which is not dependent on soil characteristics, in comparison with other polarizations that overestimated lineaments with different directions.