Application of remote sensing techniques to identify iron ore deposits in the Central Eastern Desert, Egypt: a case study at Wadi Karim and Gabal El-Hadid areas

Abstract The integration of remote sensing, spectral measurements and field verification helped in discriminating new iron occurrences hosted the metavolcanic rocks at Wadi Karim Gabal El-Hadid areas Central Eastern Desert (CED) Egypt. host were carefully recognized through different image processing techniques that applied on Landsat-8 satellite data with implementation signatures various minerals rocks. detected ore is found form Banded Iron Formation (BIF), veins lenses varied thicknesses ranging from a few centimetres to 5 m. They are composed mainly magnetite hematite, as well accessories aluminium, silicates quartz. Moreover, structure controls also illustrated investigated areas. alignment forms primary secondary structural planes their may indicate origin mode occurrence explored ore, contemporaneous syngenetic deposition solidification metavolcanics. Several sensing including Crosta principal component analysis (CPCA), constrained energy minimization (CEM) supervised classification technique newly proposed band ratio (band6/band2) for iron-rich localities within studied These showed high efficiency applicability accurate delineation iron-enriched areas; this was validated study.