ASTER Multispectral Imagery for Spectral Unmixing based Mine Tailing cartography in the North of Tunisia

In the North of Tunisia, Hammam Zriba region represents an important mine activity zone, it is among the most important in the Maghreb . The mine tailings cause the environment degradation, so it had polluted the atmosphere, the soils, the vegetation, the water quality and the ecosystem of the Hammam ouady (Dry River) which is discharged directly in the Miliane River. The Miliane River represents the second important resource of potable water, after Medjerda River. In this study, we propose to use the ASTER VNIR and SWIR Surface Reflectance, and TIR data for mine tailing cartography. Classification of the SWIR product based on partial spectral unmixing is performing using image derived endmembers identified as a mineral groups. Unmixing results coincide with XRD laboratory analysis of the field samples. Moreover, the given results show that ASTER multispectral image is more precise for certain mineral detection than Landsat ETM+ image.