MAPPING DOLOMITIZATION THROUGH A CO-REGIONALIZATION OF SIMULATED FIELD AND IMAGE-DERIVED REFLECTANCE SPECTRA - A PROOF-OF-CONCEPT STUDY

Field spectral measurements are often conducted to guide the processin g and analysis of remote sensing data. However in most cases they serv e a descriptive purpose by characterizing spectrally the materials of interest rather than an analytical purpose by integrating quantitative ly these data with the image data (e.g., through regression or co-regi onalization). The few previous studies that have been conducted in the integration of held and image data were in agriculture applications a nd vegetation studies where the two variables of interest (i.e., the h eld and image measurement) were the same namely leaf area index. The w ork presented in this Letter is a proof-of-concept study to integrate field observations on the degree of dolomitization with radiance value s from one single band out of a GER imaging spectrometer data set. 'Fi eld measurements' are simulated from GER data to generate a test set a nd a validation set. Direct interpolation of the 'field measurements' using ordinary kriging, regression using the best linear fit between t he 'field measurements' and the corresponding radiance values, and co- kriging exploiting the spatial cross correlation between the two varia bles are used to produce estimates of dolomitization. The results are evaluated using the validation set demonstrating the value of incorpor ating spatial dependencies. From the study, criteria are derived to be followed in implementation in field practice.