Abstract

Wadi Jararah-Wadi Kharit is considered a large area located in the southeastern desert of Egypt with approximately 38 000 Km2 coverage extensions The geologic outcrops of the area show a wide range of stratigraphic rock units from Precambrian to Quaternary The detection of litho logic surface coverage units and their relationships to the high-radioactivity zones and its characterizations are the main tasks of this article An integration between airborne Gamma-ray spectrometric data and Landsat 8 Operational Land Imager OLI satellite image has been used to determine and highlight the main radioactive zones covering the entire area of investigation in addition to the relationship between airborne radioactive detected zones and their different kinds of related geologic alterations The radioelement concentration values of the equivalent Uranium eU equivalent Thorium eTh and Potassium K successively discriminated several distinctive radioactive zones over Wadi Jararah-Wadi Kharit area Fifteen main groups of statistically significant anomalous zones have been distinguished and show localities that represent uraniferous anomalous zones which could considered as a possible target of interest for ground follow-up investigation Most hydrothermally altered rocks are readily grouped into two primary facies the argillic and phyllic facies these facies and other related alterations have been mapped using a familiar remote sensing image processing technique on Landsat 8 OLI data such as band ratios and Principal component analysis PCA By computing band ratios and feature-oriented PCA technique substantial improvement has been achieved in mapping the alteration zones enhanced through both processing In addition to the new discriminated radioactive zones in the study area this study shows that satellite image processing can distinguish more similar classes than airborne Gamma-ray spectrometric data while the better availability and spatial coverage makes