Multispectral remote sensing data acquired by the Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer (ASTER) were analyzed to identify and map minerals, vegetation groups, and volatiles (water and snow) in support of geologic studies of the Bodie Hills, Sweetwater Mountains, and Wassuk Range, California/Nevada. Digital mineral and vegetation mapping results are presented in both portable document format (PDF) and ERDAS Imagine format (.img). The ERDAS-format files are suitable for integration with other geospatial data in Geographic Information Systems (GIS) such as ArcGIS. The ERDAS files showing occurrence of 1) iron-bearing minerals, vegetation, and water, and 2) clay, sulfate, mica, carbonate, Mg-OH, and hydrous quartz minerals have been attributed according to identified material, so that the material detected in a pixel can be queried with the interactive attribute identification tools of GIS and image processing software packages (for example, the Identify Tool of ArcMap and the Inquire Cursor Tool of ERDAS Imagine).

All raster data have been orthorectified to the Universal Transverse Mercator (UTM) projection using a projective transform with ground-control points selected from orthorectified Landsat Thematic Mapper data and a digital elevation model from the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) National Elevation Dataset (1/3 arc second, 10 m resolution).

Metadata compliant with Federal Geographic Data Committee (FGDC) standards for all ERDAS-format files have been included, and contain important information regarding geographic coordinate systems, attributes, and cross-references. Documentation regarding spectral analysis methodologies employed to make the maps is included in these cross-references.

First posted January 11, 2010