Mapping Geological Structures in Ilbisil Area, Kajiado County Using Remote Sensing Techniques

Abstract

This project is all about the applications of remote sensing techniques in mapping the geological structures in Ilbisil area, Kajiado county. Lineament mapping constitute a very important process in the field of Geology and Earth Sciences. Much of the exploration work, mapping and the exploitation of natural resources including oil and gas, ground water and other hydrocarbons rely on a thorough understanding of the geological structures within an area and the ability to interpret the result from analysis before the exploitation process begins. This increases success rates while reducing cost and time associated with geophysical surveys. Understanding structures is the key to interpreting crustal movements that have shaped the present terrain. Geological structures play an important role in mineral and hydrocarbon exploration and potential hazard identification and monitoring. Structures can also indicate potential locations of oil and gas reserves by characterizing both the underlying subsurface geometry of rock units and the amount of crustal deformation and stress experienced in a certain locale. Remote sensing has the advantage of covering a huge area while data about features at different frequencies recorded in different spectral bands which can be exploited to obtain information about the structural geology of the area. The area of study is characterized by dense forest vegetation with bushes and thickets with difficult access, scarcity and discontinuity of the available outcrops. Geological and structural mapping therefore in this type of environment is difficult, time consuming, expensive and even dangerous and sometimes dangerous. All these factors constitute a major problem for the accurate geological mapping in the area.This study attempts to employ the use of modern satellites technology in trying to map the near surface structures and to compare and update the existing structural and geological maps. Satellite imagery have a synoptic view of the earth’s surface and therefore it is possible to acquire data in inaccessible and in huge areas. The objective of this study is to map the geological structures in Kajiado area using remote sensing techniques. The expected output is to show how the mapping method integrating remote sensing technology is useful for accurate interpretation of geological structures by designing a geodatabase for structural mapping and also to document a methodology for structural mapping using remote sensing technology. The methods to be used in this study include Pan sharpening and image sub-setting, Principal component analysis, Band ratios and combinations, Spatial filtering, Sobel filtering, Edge enhancement and Geodatabase scheme. The materials include; Landsat 8, DEM/ SRTM, Topographical and geological maps and Satellite imagery.

Keywords: Geological structure, Remote sensing

DOI: 10.7176/JEES/9-11-05

Publication date: November 30^th 2019