Studying the Western Great Basin using Remote Sensing Technology
Death Valley, California
These images consist of satellite and aircraft multispectral scanner data "draped" over a perspective view of digital topographic maps of Death Valley. Death Valley is an asymmetric fault-bounded north-south graben. Badwater, on the floor of the valley (lower center) is below sea-level. The Panamint Mountains (left) riser to over 11,000 feet at Telescope Peak (high point, left edge). The Panamints are complex lithologically but are dominated by dolomite. The valley floor consists of evaporite minerals (halite and carbonates) and shallow brine. Coalescing alluvial fans of different ages form bajadas that are especially large on the western (left) side of the valley. The mountains on the eastern (right) side of Death Valley, in the foreground of the image, are gneissic. Death Valley National Park Headquarters, at Furnace Creek, is in the center of the image, on the eastern side of the valley floor.
The upper false-color image is made from orbital Landsat Thematic Mapper images acquired in green, red, and near-infrared wavelengths. The lower image is the same scene viewed in the thermal infrared, with blue, green and red display colors assigned to bands centered at 8.3, 9.1 and 10.1 micrometers, respectively. The thermal infrared is normally used to measure temperature, but spectral differences from wavelength to wavelength are associated with silicate rock composition. Therefore, multispectral thermal data are especially useful in geologic mapping. For example, in this view, quartzose rocks are colored bright red, and carbonates are green.
These data simulate the imaging results taken by ASTER from NASA's new satellite, Terra. The image example was supplied by Michael Abrams and Anne Kahle, Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Caltech.
Earth & Space Sciences 35-1310
University of Washington
Seattle, WA 98195-1310
206.685.8265
206.685.2379 fax
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