• Economic and Environmental Geology
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• v.53 no.4
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• pp.425-440
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• 2020

The study area is located in the southern part of the M'aider Paleozoic basin in the Moroccan Eastern Anti-Atlas. It is an arid region, characterized by minimal vegetation cover, which can provide an ideal environment to apply remote sensing. In this study, remote sensing and field investigations were integrated for lithological and structural lineaments mapping. The Landsat 8 OLI data were processed in order to understand the role of lithology and geological structures in the distribution of mineral deposits in the study area. To achieve this purpose, the Color Composite (CC), the Principal Component Analysis (PCA) and Band Rationing transformation (BR) tests were performed. The results of remote sensing techniques coupled with field investigations have shown that the zones of high lineaments densities are highly correlated with the occurrences of barite mineralization. These findings depict a spatial relationship between structural lineaments and the mineralization distribution zones. Therefore, the barite and Iron oxides mineralization veins, which occur mainly in the Ras Kammouna district, seem to have a structural control. The methodological approach used in this study examining lithological mapping and lineament extractions can be used to explore mineral deposits in arid regions to a high degree of efficiency.