Journal of African Earth Sciences 129 (2017) 445e457

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Journal of African Earth Sciences

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Integration of spectral, thermal, and textural features of ASTER data

using Random Forests classification for lithological mapping
Feizollah Masoumi a, Taymour Eslamkish a, *, Ali Akbar Abkar b, Mehdi Honarmand c,
Jeff R. Harris d
a
Department of Mining and Metallurgical Engineering, Amirkabir University of Technology (Tehran Polytechnic), Hafez Ave. No. 424, Tehran, Iran
b
AgriWatch B.V., Weerninklanden 24, 7542 SC, Enschede, The Netherlands
c
Department of Ecology, Institute of Science and High Technology and Environmental Sciences, Graduate University of Advanced Technology, Kerman, Iran
d
Geological Survey of Canada, 601 Booth St., Ottawa, Ontario, Canada

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: The ensemble classifier, Random Forests (RF), is assessed for mapping lithology using the Advanced
Received 30 July 2016 Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer (ASTER) imagery over an area in southern Iran.
Received in revised form The study area in the northern part of Rabor in the Kerman's Cenozoic magmatic arc (KCMA) is well
17 December 2016
exposed and contains some copper mineralization occurrences. In this research, the following six groups
Accepted 23 January 2017
of ASTER datasets were used for RF classification: nine spectral bands in the VNIR and SWIR, five thermal
Available online 26 January 2017
bands in TIR, all 14 bands (including VNIR, SWIR, and TIR), band ratios, texture features, and principal
components (PCs). The results showed that band ratios and all ASTER bands were able to more efficiently
Keywords:
Random Forests
discriminate rock units than PC and texture images. The overall classification accuracies achieved were
Lithological mapping 62.58%, 55.40%, 65.04%, 67.12%, 54.54%, and 53.99% for the nine VNIR/SWIR bands, five TIR bands, all
ASTER ASTER bands, band ratios, textural, and PCs datasets, respectively. Four datasets including all ASTER
Texture bands, band ratios, textural, and PCs datasets (37 bands) were combined as one group and applied in
Principal components second RF classification which led to increase overall accuracy (up to 81.52%). Based on the four classified
Band ratio maps, an uncertainty map was produced to identify areas of variable (uncertain) classification results,
which revealed that approximately 21.43% of all pixels on the classified map were highly uncertain. The
RF algorithm found that 12 of the predictors were more important in the classification process. These
predictors were used in a third RF classification, which resulted in an overall classification accuracy of
77.21%. Thus, the third RF classification decreases the accuracy. Field observations were used to validate
our classification results.
© 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction relatively short-time frame in remote areas at reduced costs when

Rapid increases in remote sensing technology and sensor
development has provided geologists with excellent tools with
which to conduct regional geological mapping studies in exposed
environments supporting the exploration for minerals and oil (van
der Meer et al., 2012). Remotely sensed images can provide new
geological information that can be used both for producing new
geological maps or updating existing legacy geological maps in
areas that are difficult to access and very expensive to reach.
Moreover, a predictive geological map can be produced in a
* Corresponding author.
E-mail address: T.eslamkish@aut.ac.ir (T. Eslamkish).
compared to traditional field mapping programs. The results can
also focus field studies to more complex areas where mineraliza-
tion may have a higher probability of occurring. The interpretation
of remotely sensed data for detecting different minerals, rock types,
and soil are mainly based on spectral signatures, colour, and texture
(Mwaniki et al., 2015).
The Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection
Radiometer (ASTER) is a multispectral imaging system operating on
NASA's Terra satellite launched in December 1999 and has acquired
detailed information from the Earth surface since March 2000
(Abrams et al., 2015). The instrument acquires a trio of multispec-
tral images of the Earth in the visible to near-infrared (VNIR; three
bands between 0.5 and 0.9 mm, 15-m resolution, stereoscopic
capability in band 3, with nadir (band 3N) and backward (band 3B)

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jafrearsci.2017.01.028
1464-343X/© 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
446 F. Masoumi et al. / Journal of African Earth Sciences 129 (2017) 445e457
views), the shortwave infrared (SWIR; six bands between 1.6 and
2.5 mm, 30-m resolution), and the thermal infrared (TIR; five bands
between 8 and 12 mm, 90-m resolution) (Ninomiya et al., 2005).
ASTER has been used extensively to map rock types (lithology) as
well as alteration minerals that are useful vectors for mineralization
in a variety of geological environments (e.g. Liu et al., 2014; Mars
and Rowan, 2006; Ranjbar et al., 2011; Rowan et al., 2003; Salati
et al., 2011; Shahriari et al., 2015; Zhang et al., 2007).
Classification is a well-known image processing procedure for
creating thematic maps from remotely sensed data. Use of both
spectral and textural information for improving classification ac-
curacy has been suggested by many authors (e.g. Lu and Weng,
2007; van der Meer, 2003; Plaza et al., 2009; Richards, 2012). van
der Meer (2003) and Salati et al. (2011) emphasize the usefulness
of spatial (i.e. contextual) information for identifying transitions
between lithological units.
Although geological mapping has been undertaken using spec-
tral information extracted from ASTER bands (e.g. Hadigheh and
Ranjbar, 2013; Rowan et al., 2005; Zhang et al., 2007; Zou, 2013),
there have been limited attempts to integrate spectral and spatial
(textural) data derived from ASTER images for lithological and
mineral mapping. Thus, this motivated us to investigate the effi-
ciency of integration of spectral and spatial data in lithological
mapping using an ensemble learning algorithm, called Random
Forests (RF; Breiman, 2001). In addition to spectral features
(reflectance), capturing textural features of lithologies that may be
unique as a result of differences in physical weathering erosion and
drainage, can provide useful supporting information to distinguish
rock types (Li et al., 2011). Using texture features along with
spectral properties of ASTER data has recently resulted in improved
lithological mapping (Othman and Gloaguen, 2014). They used
spectral and geomorphic features derived from ASTER bands in a
support vector machine (SVM) classification to improve mapping
ophiolite complex in the Zagros mountains, Iraq. In an another
study, Jakob et al. (2015) achieved an extremely high overall
Fig. 1. (a) Geographical location of study area and Kerman cenozoic magmatic arc (KCMA) in Iran overlain on cenozoic magmatic rocks (modified from Dimitrijevic (1973)). (b)
Geological map the of the study area (modified from Srdic et al. (1972)).
classification accuracy using a SVM classification of spectral and
textural features derived from ASTER and Landsat 8 data for
improving the geological map of the Ras Gharib area in northeast
Egypt.
The present study applies additional derivative images as well as
common band ratios and principal components (PCs) to evaluate
whether these images can improve the classification of different
lithologies. We performed classification using RF classifier on six
combinations of the data including: (1) ASTER corrected VNIRþS-
WIR bands (nine bands), (2) ASTER corrected TIR bands (five
bands), (3) All corrected ASTER VNIRþSWIRþTIR bands (14 bands),
(4) Various band ratios (10 band ratios) derived to enhance various
minerals of different lithologies of the study area, (5) PC of ASTER
first nine bands (five selected PCs), and (6) Texture features derived
from the ASTER band 6 (eight selected textural features).
The RF classifier has gradually been gaining attention in
geological mapping (e.g. Cracknell and Reading, 2014; Harris et al.,
2014; He et al., 2015; Othman and Gloaguen, 2015; Rodriguez-
Galiano et al., 2014) as there are few input parameters, a smaller
sensitivity to noise and over fitting and the capability to determine
variable importance. In this study, a center part of Kerman Cenozoic
magmatic arc (KCMA; Shafiei et al., 2009) in Iran was selected for
study since this region is well-exposed, remote, inaccessible and
hosts some porphyry copper prospects occurrences. Thus, the area
is an ideal environment for conducting a geological mapping
campaign using remotely sensed data.
2. Geology of the study area
Fig. 1a shows location of the study area and the distribution of
Cenozoic magmatic rocks, which contain known copper deposits
(Hezarkhani, 2008) within the KCMA. The study area is located
between longitude 56 460 5100 E and 57 000 0000 E and latitude 29
200 1100 N and 29 300 0000 N, in the center part of the KCMA (Fig. 1).
 F. Masoumi et al. / Journal of African Earth Sciences 129 (2017) 445e457
The study area is located in a mountainous region with an altitude
range between 1820 and 4376 m above sea level and relatively high
amount of vegetation cover especially in spring season. The geology
of this area contains eight main rock units shown on Fig. 1b. The
rock units vary in age from upper Cretaceous to Recent gravel fans.
The two main lithotpyes that are distinctive are diorite-
granodiorite Oligocene-Miocene igneous bodies and upper
Eocene andesite and andesite-basalt lava flows (Srdic et al., 1972).
The youngest rock unit is gravel fans, which mainly occur in south
of the study area. Eocene tuff covers a small region in the southeast
of the study area and lepidocyclina limestone, diorite-porphyries,
poorly lithified sandstone and conglomerate with pebbles of vol-
canic rocks are the other geologic units comprising the study area
(Srdic et al., 1972).
3. Material and methods
3.1. Preprocessing of ASTER data
An ASTER level 1B (L1B) scene, with a solar elevation angle of
42.36 and an azimuth angle of 162.04 , was acquired on 7
November 2001 over the study area. The image was georeferenced
to the World Geodetic System 1984 (WGS84) ellipsoid datum and
projected to Universal Transverse Mercator (UTM) zone 40N. SWIR
and TIR bands were resampled to the VNIR spatial resolution of
15 m. Crosstalk effect, which is caused by signal leakage from band
4 to other SWIR bands, has been corrected using the crosstalk
correction software (CCS; Iwasaki and Tonooka, 2005). Digital
number (DN) values of ASTER L1B were converted to calibrated
spectral radiance at-sensor using the following equation derived
from Abrams et al. (2002):
Ll ¼ ðDn  1Þ:UCC
where
2 1 1
L
l ¼ Spectral radiance at-sensor [W.m sr mm ] Band ratioing, a simple and useful technique for mapping li-
UCC ¼ Unit conversion coefficients [unitless]
Spectral radiance at-sensor of all VNIR and SWIR ASTER bands
were processed to top of atmosphere (TOA) reflectance using the
following equation derived from Chander et al. (2009):
p$Ll $d2
rl ¼
ESUNl $cos qs
where
rl ¼ TOP reflectance [unitless]
p ¼ 3.14159
Ll ¼ Spectral radiance at-sensor [W m2 sr1 mm1]
d ¼ Distance between earth and sun [astronomical units]
ESUNl ¼ Mean exoatmospheric solar irradiance [W.m2. mm1]
qs ¼ Solar zenith angle [degrees]
TOA of reflectance for both the VNIR and SWIR bands was
calculated and then grouped into one file, which formed the first
dataset input to the RF classifier.
The presence of vegetation can obscure lithological units,
therefore, in order to mask out the vegetation, the well-known
normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) was applied to the
above dataset based on Eq. (3):
band3ðNIRÞ  band2ðRedÞ
NDVI ¼
band3ðNIRÞ þ band2ðRedÞ
447
The range of NDVI varies from 1 to þ1 (Behnia et al., 2012;
Chuvieco and Huete, 2010). NDVI values greater than 0.2e0.3 are
evidence of vegetation and NDVI values less than 0.2e0.3 include
rocks and soil pixels, as well as snow/ice and clouds (Bertoldi et al.,
2011; Fung and Siu, 2000). An upper threshold of the NDVI is
chosen to separate vegetation and non-vegetation (Harris et al.,
2014). Silicates and carbonates also have distinct adsorption fea-
tures in the TIR region of the electromagnetic spectrum (Abrams
et al., 2002; Jakob et al., 2015). Thus the TIR bands were prepared
for further image processing. At sensor spectral radiance (result of
Eq. (1)) of five TIR bands were converted to an effective at-sensor
brightness temperature according to the equation derived from
Chander et al. (2009):
K
T¼
2  (4)
ln KLl1 þ 1
where
T ¼ Temperature at the sensor [Kelvin]
K2 ¼ Calibration constant 2 [Kelvin]
K1 ¼ Calibration constant 1 [W.m2 sr1 mm1]
Ll ¼ Spectral radiance at-sensor [W m2 sr1 mm1]
Kelvin to Celsius conversion, then, was done using a simple
metric conversion equation. The five TIR bands formed the second
dataset input to the RF classifier. In addition, the TIR bands were
grouped with the VNIRþSWIR bands creating the third dataset
input to the RF classifier.
(1)
3.2. Band ratios
thology, is computed by dividing the pixel value of one spectral
band by the corresponding pixel in another band. This method can
reduce the effect of topography while enhancing spectral reflec-
tance of various materials (Mwaniki et al., 2015; Richards, 2012). In
order to select the most suitable band ratios for enhancing rock
units in the study area, spectra of rock samples were radiometri-
FieldSpec3®
(2) cally measured by the spectroradiometer
(0.45e2.5 mm) in the laboratory. However, the difficult topographic
conditions of the study area prevented sampling of all the rock
units. Fig. 2 shows some of these laboratory spectra resampled to
match the bandwidths of the ASTER VNIR and SWIR bands. These
spectra were carefully studied to find the best band ratios for
enhancing rock units. The granite spectrum exhibits a deep ab-
sorption feature in bands 6 but is reflective in bands 5 and 7.
Granodiorite spectrum shows a deep absorption feature in band 8
and reflectance features in bands 4 and 5. The Andesite spectrum
shows a deep absorption feature in bands 8 whereas shoulders of
this absorption are reflective (bands 7 and 9). A prominent reflec-
tance feature of basalt and tuff spectra occur in band 3 whereas
absorption features are located in bands 4 and 6. Based on these
spectral features, band ratios 4/6, 4/8, 3/4, 5/8, (5þ7)/6, and (7þ9)/8
were determined as useful ratios for enhancing some of the li-
thologies in the study area. Spectral properties of other rocks in the
study area were determined based on the image spectrum and
pervious published ratios for geology mapping (Harris et al., 2014;
Tangestani et al., 2011; van der Meer et al., 2012). These additional
(3) ratios include bands 4/9, 6/7, 7/4, and 8/6. As before these calcu-
lated ratios were grouped into one file for input to the RF classifier.
448 F. Masoumi et al. / Journal of African Earth Sciences 129 (2017) 445e457

Fig. 2. Reflectance spectra of some rock samples in the study area measured using a FieldSpec3® spectroradiometer resampled to the ASTER VNIRþSWIR bands (VNIRþSWIR
bandwidths of ASTER sensor are shown on the Figure).

3.3. Principal component analysis (PCA)
Generally, the existence of a high correlation between multi-
spectral bands necessitates a mathematical transform that can
produce new uncorrelated axes with which to manipulate the data
(Richards, 2012). The PC transformation, well-known as a funda-
mental statistics method in image processing, reduces the dimen-
sionality of a dataset into a fewer number of axes (components)
that describes the majority of the information (variance) in the raw
dataset while segregating noise into the higher components (Singh
and Harrison, 1985). Each new axes is a linear mix of all the input
variables (measured by eigenvectors) and often presents patterns
in the data not seen in combinations of the raw dataset (Research
Systems Inc., 2004). In this study PCA was conducted on the VNIR
and SWIR ASTER bands to highlight the various lithologies. Table 1
shows the result of PCA on ASTER VNIRþSWIR bands. The first
component (PC1) accounts for 91.17% of the variance of the data and
comprises an equal mix of all bands although band 4 has more
influence (higher eigenvalue of 0.502) followed by the SWIR bands.
One could consider the first component as a NIR/SWIR component
whereas PC2 is dominated by the visible bands could be considered
a visible component. The first two components describe almost 99%
of the information content. However, visual inspection of the
higher PC's revealed substantial information related to the distri-
bution of lithological units. As a result, the first five components
were used as the fifth dataset for input to the RF classifier.
3.4. Textural analysis
Texture as a component of any remotely sensed image can play
an important role in classifications studies as some rock units can
be distinguished by spectral reflectance and emission properties as
well as textural properties. Tonal variations in the spatial domain
and the overall visual smoothness and coarseness of image

Table 1
Principal components analysis on VNIRþSWIR bands of ASTER.

Principal component Band 1 Band 2 Band 3 Band 4 Band 5 Band 6 Band 7 Band 8 Band 9 Variance (%)

PC1 0.216 0.304 0.178 0.502 0.348 0.389 0.370 0.325 0.244 91.17
PC2 0.536 0.657 0.322 0.249 0.199 0.193 0.147 0.087 0.083 06.36
PC3 0.039 0.023 0.115 0.781 0.109 0.325 0.137 0.347 0.340 01.44
PC4 0.218 0.038 0.091 0.065 0.475 0.485 0.345 0.591 0.083 0.28
PC5 0.389 0.005 0.612 0.031 0.355 0.453 0.354 0.035 0.114 0.23
PC6 0.250 0.058 0.556 0.251 0.360 0.181 0.516 0.274 0.236 0.16
PC7 0.222 0.120 0.125 0.008 0.585 0.375 0.546 0.361 0.079 0.14
PC8 0.227 0.216 0.069 0.046 0.025 0.231 0.069 0.455 0.792 0.10
PC9 0.54 0.638 0.370 0.052 0.001 0.190 0.083 0.025 0.328 0.08
 F. Masoumi et al. / Journal of African Earth Sciences 129 (2017) 445e457
comprise textural attributes of an image (Chica-Olmo and Abarca-
Hernandez, 2000). First-order textural measures include calcula-
tion of a variance or standard deviation image. A grey level co-
occurrence matrix (GLCM; Haralick et al., 1973) is the most popu-
lar technique for the computation of second order textural features
(Li et al., 2011). Textural measures including a GLCM matrix are
calculated by passing a moving window (most commonly a square)
of a given size over an image. A variety of sizes were tested for
calculating textural measure and a 5  5 window produced the best
results. Haralick et al. (1973) introduced 14 textural parameters
which can be derived from a GLCM matrix. The reader is referred to
Haralick et al. (1973) for the computational formula. In this study
we used eight textural measures including mean, variance, homo-
geneity, contrast, dissimilarity, entropy, second moment, and cor-
relation that were derived from the ASTER band 6. Band 6 was
selected because of its high standard deviation. The eight extracted
textural parameters formed the sixth dataset input to the RF
classifier.
3.5. Select training areas
The spectral/lithological classes were defined after masking
vegetation and enhancing the imagery. We used the digitized
1:100,000 geological map as well as ASTER imagery and geological
knowledge of the study area to select representative training areas
of the various rock types. To attain a reliable classification, the
number of training areas (pixels) for each spectral class must be
sufficient. Jensen (2005) suggested 10n pixels for each class, where
n is the number of bands whereas Mather (1999) and Piper (1987)
suggested 10n to 30n pixels. In our study the number of pixels for
each class far exceeded the 10n. In addition a set of independent
training areas for each rock class were identified for validation
purposes. A 50% split of the classification and validation training
areas, as suggested by He et al. (2015) was used in this study. Table 2
presents a summary of the training areas.
Transformed divergence (TD), a statistical method used for
measuring class separability, was calculated for the training data-
set. TD which is considerably better than Jeffries-Matusita (JM) and
simple divergence is calculated as following equation (Richards,
2012):
0 1
B Dij
C
TDij ¼ 2@1  e 8 A
where Dij is the divergence between classes i and j. The range of TD
values is between 0 and 2 in which values greater than 1.9 indicate
the optimum separabilty between class pairs whereas ranges be-
tween 1.5 and 1.9 indicate a moderate separabilty. Values between
1.0 and 1.5 indicate poor separability (marginal), and values less
than 1 indicate very poor to no separabilty (Behnia et al., 2012;
Table 2
Summary of training and validation areas (ROIs) used in this study for classification of ASTER data (All classes are introduced in Fig. 1b).
Lithological class Training areas
no. of pixels
Q 1325
Ng2 1083
OIM 350
Ngc1 1480
dp 575
Esn 398
gd 5619
Eaf 5642
449
Harris et al., 2012).
3.6. Random Forests (RF)
RF algorithm, first introduced by Breiman (2001), is an ensemble
classifier that employs multiple trees to classify an image. A random
subset of variables (image channels) are selected for each tree as
well as a random sample (with replacement) of the training areas
whereby 2/3 are used to produce the classification for the indi-
vidual tree and the remaining 1/3 are used for validation. This
process is referred to as bagging and the validation training areas
provide an out-of-bag accuracy assessment for each tree. The RF
classifier uses a voting system whereby the majority vote for a given
class from all the trees is calculated on a pixel basis and this forms
the final classification map (Breiman, 2001; Eisavi et al., 2015). In RF
classification the Gini index, which determines the impurity of each
node in a decision tree, was applied to construct decision trees (He
et al., 2015). The RF algorithm requires little user input other than
the number of trees to generate (Ntree) and the number of variables
to select for each tree (Mtry; Belgiu and Dra
guţ, 2016; Breiman,
2001). Some researchers have recommended the selection of the
square root of the number of variables for Mtry (e.g. Breiman, 2001;
Gislason et al., 2006; He et al., 2015) and this is what was used in
this study. As an example for the first dataset (first nine ASTER
bands), Mtry was 3.
In this study RF classification was implemented for all datasets
using EnMAP-Box (van der Linden et al., 2015), which freely is
available at http://www.enmap.org. All classifications were carried
out by setting a default Ntree value of 100. RF also calculates vari-
able importance in the classification process which is helpful in
reducing a large number of input variables to a smaller subset of
variables that has the strongest influence in the RF classification.
3.7. Methodology
The ASTER data and derivative images, as mentioned above,
were divided into six datasets that include VNIR-SWIR, TIR, VNIR-
SWIR-TIR, band ratios, textural images, and PC images. Fig. 3
shows flowchart summarizing the methodology used in this
study. Although ASTER TIR bands contain some unique spectral
features (i.e. carbonate and silicate minerals), they could not be
used for spectral mapping for all lithological units in the study area.
(5) However, they were applied as one separate dataset and also
combined with reflective bands to investigate their usefulness in
mapping lithology of the study area. The RF classification was
applied to all six datasets of the ASTER data as shown in Fig. 3. Six
classified maps were produced using the RF algorithm. Each of the
RF classifications maps from the six data subsets were validated
using the independent training areas to create confusion matrices
(overall accuracy) as well as calculation of the Kappa coefficient. To
investigate the potential of all datasets together in classification
Validation areas
no. of polygons no. of pixels no. of polygons
10 1302 10
9 1045 9
7 328 6
9 1452 8
5 523 5
4 369 4
12 5574 11
12 5601 12
450 F. Masoumi et al. / Journal of African Earth Sciences 129 (2017) 445e457

Fig. 3. Flowchart of the methodology used in this study for lithological mapping using ASTER data and RF classifier.

and reach to maximum accuracy, four datasets comprising VNIR-
SWIR-TIR, band ratios, textural, and PCs (37 bands) were com-
bined as input to RF classifier. VNIR-SWIR and TIR groups were
excluded from combination to prevent repetition. Additionally, the
four classification maps were combined using a majority vote for
each pixel producing an ensemble classification map as well as
producing an uncertainty (variability map). The majority classifi-
cation map contains the class that was most frequent on all four
classifications on a pixel-to-pixel basis. The variability map can be
used to measure uncertainty in the classification by calculating the
standard deviation of the class values on a pixel-to-pixel basis.
Pixels with higher standard deviation values are more uncertain
with respect to classification (Behnia et al., 2012; Harris et al.,
2012). The most variable pixels can be excluded on the final RF
classification map by choosing different standard deviation
thresholds from the uncertainty map (Behnia et al., 2012; Harris
et al., 2012).
For each of the RF classifications on the four datasets the most
predictive variables (as measured by RF) were identified and
combined in one file. The RF classification was applied to this file
and results were compared with the four combined datasets.
 F. Masoumi et al. / Journal of African Earth Sciences 129 (2017) 445e457 451

4. Results for texture dataset (very poor separability) to a maximum of 2 (very

4.1. Training area separability
Fig. 4a shows a plot of TD values for all possible class pairs for
each of the six datasets. As there were eight lithological classes, 28
class pairs were available for comparison, hence; a set of 28 TD
values was computed for each dataset. The highest separability was
achieved based on the ASTER 14 bands and band ratios datasets.
The most variation in the TD values occur with the TIR and texture
bands with values varying between of 0.36 for TIR dataset and 0.4
good separability). Although TD values for class separability based
on the texture dataset for most class pairs are very low, values for
some pairs namely Q-OIM, Ng2-OIM, OIM-Ngc1, and OIM-dp have
the highest values (TD is 2). This indicates that for some classes the
texture images do contribute to the separability and are useful to
include in the classifications. Similarly, TD values for class separa-
bility based on the TIR dataset for 12 class pairs are very poor (less
than 1) whereas in some class pairs (five class pairs) are very good
that VNIRþSWIR show lower TD values.
The PC dataset in general offers low separability between classes

Fig. 4. (a) Transformed divergence (TD) values for all the class pairs for the six datasets. (b) Average of TD values for all six datasets (All classes are introduced in Fig. 1b).
452 F. Masoumi et al. / Journal of African Earth Sciences 129 (2017) 445e457

and is only slightly higher on average than the texture dataset. The
PC dataset exhibits the minimum separability for 14 class pairs and
for the 14 remaining pairs the TD values are slightly higher than the
texture or TIR datasets. Fig. 4b shows the plot of average separa-
bility for all datasets. The lowest average separability is 1 for the
class pair Ngc1-Eaf. However, the TD values based on the band
ratios and 14 ASTER band dataset for this pair is 1.8 and 1.78,
respectively, which indicates a moderate separability. According to
this plot, 19 class pairs had average TD values greater than 1.5, and
the average for nine class pairs fluctuated between 1 and 1.5. None
of the average values are lower than 1 (very poor separability). The
value of integrating all the ASTER bands can be seen in Fig. 4a as this
dataset offers the highest separability for most classes.
4.2. Classification and uncertainty map
Firstly, all six datasets were classified separately using the RF
classifier. Table 3 presents the results of the accuracy assessment.
The highest classification accuracies were achieved using the AS-
TER 14 band and band ratio datasets, which produced overall ac-
curacies of 65.04% and 67.12%, respectively. The lowest accuracies
were produced from the texture and PC datasets achieving overall
accuracies of only 54.54% and 53.99%, respectively. The texture and
PC datasets did not improve the accuracy of classification when
compared to the nine spectral bands of ASTER dataset (overall ac-
curacy 62.81%). In fact the overall accuracy decreased by approxi-
mately 8%. This is not surprising since these datasets were
characterized by low class separabilities as measured by TD. The
low classification accuracy (and low separability) produced by the
PC dataset was thought to be a result of only using the first five
components as they contained most of the information of the nine
spectral bands ASTER dataset. However when we included all nine
PCs in the classification the overall accuracy only increased by
2.39% to a value of 56.38% which is lower by 6.43% than the accu-
racy achieved using the nine bands ASTER dataset.
In order to identify the most uncertain (variable) pixels and to
discover the agreement between each of the four datasets (14 AS-
TER bands, band ratios, textures, and PCs) in classification, an un-
certainty map was produced. Fig. 5 shows the uncertainty map
calculated from the four classified datasets. This map shows the
spatial distribution of uncertain pixels and their associated pat-
terns. The variability ranges from 0% (red pixels) to 66% (blue
pixels). This means that each pixel gets the same label at least in
two classified maps. The red pixels indicate very low uncertainty
(i.e. variability 0%). The white pixels indicate that area is classified
as the same class on three of the four classified maps. The most
uncertain pixels (i.e. variability 66%) are spatially diverse over the
study area and occurring in all rock units. Calculating statistics of
this uncertainty map revealed that 42.65% of all pixels have a
variability of 0% (i.e. the same class in four classified maps); 35.92%
have a variability of 33% (i.e., the same class in three classified
maps); and 21.43% have a variability of 66% (i.e., the same class in
two classified maps). The most uncertain pixels can be masked out
to emphasize only the pixels that have a higher degree of certainty
on the classified maps.
4.3. Integration of datasets and the most predictive variables
The highest classification accuracy (67.12%) was achieved with
the band ratio dataset (Table 3). Classification of the four integrated
datasets shows the overall accuracy and Kappa coefficient 81.52%
and 0.74, respectively (Table 4). The dp, Esn, OIM, and Q classes
have the best user's accuracy (>97%) and the Esn and OIM classes
have the best producer's accuracy (>95%). The lowest user's accu-
racy was 61.22%, 67.59%, and 72.94 for the Ngc1, Ng2, and Eaf
classes, respectively, while the lowest producer's accuracy was for
the Ng2 class (65.48%).
Fig. 6 presents the most important bands (i.e. strongest pre-
dictors of rock units) for each classification derived from the four
mentioned datasets. Values present the normalized rather than raw
variable importance which computed as follows: For each tree the
samples being out-of-bag are permuted in the respective variable,
put down the tree and the accuracies are computed. The accuracies
of the permuted out-of-bag samples are subtracted from the ac-
curacies of the original samples. The average of the differences of
the accuracies of a variable is the raw importance for these vari-
ables. Dividing the raw variable importance by the respective
standard deviation results in the normalized variable importance. A
high value means that the variable has a high importance for the
entire RF and vice versa. The variable importance rank reveals that
for the 14 band ASTER dataset bands 4, 12, 10, 6 and 5, respectively,
are the most important. PC1 contributes the most in the classifi-
cation process for PC dataset. Band ratios (7þ9)/8, 4/6, (5þ7)/6, and
5/8 are the strongest predictors of all the ratios calculated for this
study. The strongest predictors derived from the textural images
are the correlation and mean parameters.
The RF classification was then applied to only the strongest
predictors. Fig. 7 shows the result of classification. Table 4 shows
the result of accuracy assessment for selected the most important
variables (i.e. 12 combined variables). The overall accuracy and
Kappa coefficient are 77.21% and 0.69, respectively. The dp, OIM,
and Esn classes have the best user's accuracy (>97%) and the Esn
and OIM classes have the best producer's accuracy (>92%). The
lowest user's accuracy was 60.95%, 64.22%, and 72.61% for the Ngc1,

Table 3
Overall accuracy, Kappa coefficient, and accuracies for individual classes of RF for classification of all data sets (All classes are introduced in Fig. 1b).

Lithological class VNIR and SWIR TIR bands of ASTER ASTER bands Overall Band ratios Overall Textures Overall PCs Overall
bands of ASTER Overall accuracy ¼ 65.04% accuracy ¼ 67.12% accuracy ¼ 54.54% accuracy ¼ 53.99%
Overall accuracy ¼ 55.40 Kappa Kappa Kappa Kappa
accuracy ¼ 62.81% Kappa coefficient ¼ 0.51 coefficient ¼ 0.55 coefficient ¼ 0.36 coefficient ¼ 0.35
Kappa coefficient ¼ 0.39
coefficient ¼ 0.48

User's Producer's User's Producer's User's Producer's User's Producer's User's Producer's User's Producer's

dp 93.11 66.86 83.31 81.59 96.14 74.45 92.55 70.08 63.75 47.76 85.96 28.19
Eaf 52.85 75.67 48.35 66.11 53.50 77.51 61.25 79.42 49.47 71.52 46.65 74.11
Esn 87.06 18.41 76.69 31.09 100 23.63 97.70 25.41 44.59 18.21 45.16 17.48
gd 67.17 70.66 54.41 52.75 69.11 73.02 71.34 77.48 58.22 68.70 62.33 68.50
Ng2 90.65 32.70 84.92 41.91 95.91 34.99 91.76 41.92 81.06 19.46 79.64 16.81
Ngc1 58.60 47.97 45.03 40.25 58.76 40.67 60.33 40.22 43.13 24.66 39.86 26.86
OIM 91.00 43.86 80.22 53.73 95.96 45.78 93.03 45.06 89.01 39.04 85.71 14.46
Q 84.89 54.84 73.76 57.61 89.40 59.60 89.42 60.30 60.96 33.47 67.55 30.22
 F. Masoumi et al. / Journal of African Earth Sciences 129 (2017) 445e457 453

Fig. 5. Variability map produced, showing the variability in classification for each pixel of four classified maps.

Table 4 mineralization (see Fig. 1a for distribution of copper deposits

Overall accuracy, Kappa coefficient, and producer's and user's accuracies for indi- within the KCMA) and contains a world class porphyry deposit
vidual classes of RF for classification of the most important variables (best pre- namely Sar Cheshmeh with 1200 million tons of ore at 0.7% Cu and
dictors) and combined datasets (All classes are introduced in Fig. 1b).
0.03% Mo (Shafiei et al., 2009). Therefore, updating geological maps
Lithological class Best predictors (12 Combined datasets (37 of this area is an essential requirement to assist further mineral
bands) bands) exploration programs. The study area, located within the KCMA, has
Overall Overall two main geological units (namely dioritic-granodioritic Oligo-
accuracy ¼ 77.21% accuracy ¼ 81.52% cene-Miocene igneous bodies (gd) and upper Eocene andesite and
Kappa Kappa andesite-basalt lava flows (Eaf)) that host the main alteration and
coefficient ¼ 0.69 coefficient ¼ 0.74
mineralization (Dimitrijevic, 1973). A portion of the ground truth
User's Producer's User's Producer's data (rock samples of the studied area) that were collected for
dp 98.59 71.42 99.31 73.09 spectral analysis of alteration minerals was used to evaluate the
Eaf 72.61 82.95 72.94 83.01 classification. The field observations, including a dataset of 41 field
Esn 97.84 92.38 98.94 95.26
stations in which rock types were recorded were overlaid on the
gd 86.70 73.08 87.95 76.17
Ng2 64.22 61.08 67.59 65.48
existing geological map and resulted in an accuracy of nearly 80%
Ngc1 60.95 83.26 61.22 83.35 and 75% for the gd and Eaf rock units, respectively. Fig. 8 shows
OIM 98.50 95.75 98.74 96.29 ground photographs of andesite and granodiorite in the study area.
Q 93.20 77.24 97.45 81.34 This study has indicated the efficiency of ASTER data for the
classification of rock units in the study area. The highest overall
accuracies were achieved using all 14 ASTER bands (65.04%) and the
Ng2, and Eaf classes, respectively, while the lowest producer's ac- band ratios (67.12%). This indicates that inclusion of the TIR bands
curacy was for the Ng2 class (61.08%). with the VNIR and SWIR bands does contribute to the classification.
Moreover, the calculation of band ratios is extremely valuable for
5. Discussion classification for various lithologies in the study area. This supports
the conclusions made by Harris et al. (2014) who also found ratios
The KCMA has a high potential for hosting porphyry copper very useful for lithologic classification in an cold desert Arctic
454 F. Masoumi et al. / Journal of African Earth Sciences 129 (2017) 445e457

Fig. 6. Normalized spectral feature importance of all ASTER bands, band ratios, textures, and PCs datasets.

Fig. 7. (a) Spectral map of rock units derived from the RF classification applied to only the most predictive bands. Field sample points (numbered) are overlaid and occur primarily
over the Eaf, and gd rock units. (b) Geological map the of the study area (modified from Srdic et al. (1972)).

environment. These accuracies were approximately 10%e12% thermal and spectral bands show some differences. Some class
higher than the accuracies achieved using the textural and PC pairs that show lower separability (i.e. Q-Ng2, Q-Ngc1, Q-gd, Q-Eaf)
datasets. based on spectral bands, represent very good separability based on
With respect to separability of the various lithologies the thermal bands (see Fig. 4). The combination of ASTER VNIR and
 F. Masoumi et al. / Journal of African Earth Sciences 129 (2017) 445e457
Fig. 8. Field observation of two main rock units (gd and Eaf) in the study area. (a) General view of andesite. (b) Close up view of andesite. (c) General view of granodiorite. (d) Close
up view of granodiorite.
SWIR spectral bands with TIR bands leads to better training area
separability (measured by TD), and consequently a reasonably high
classification accuracy when compared to the independent check
training areas. The classification of band ratios resulted in a higher
accuracy than the results from the PC datasets. The study area was
located in a highly mountainous region, so the more accurate re-
sults of band ratios may be due in part to the efficiency of band
ratios for reducing solar illumination effects related to topography
as well as to the sensitivity of the ratios chosen to various type of
mineral alteration. The best predictors of band ratios were (7þ9)/8,
4/6, (5þ7)/6, and 5/8 (see Fig. 6). These ratios have previously been
confirmed as useful ratios for detecting alteration minerals and
lithological mapping (e.g. Alimohammadi et al., 2015; Gad and
Kusky, 2007; Harris et al., 2014; Mars and Rowan, 2006;
Rajendran and Nasir, 2015).
The textural images in this study did not result in high classifi-
cation accuracies (overall accuracy 54.54%) of lithology when used
alone. However, when integrated with other datasets they did help
improve classification accuracy with the mean and correlation
images being the best predictors (see Fig. 6 and Tables 3 and 4).
RF is an ensemble, multiple decision-trees, non-parametric
classifier that ranks the most important variables (i.e. input bands)
for predicting the rock units in the study area. In addition, RF
classifier is a valuable machine learning algorithm in the study of
complex areas where large multisource data should be handled
(Rodriguez-Galiano et al., 2014). Integration of the most important
variables in this study resulted in higher classification accuracies
when compared to the 14 VNIR, SWIR and TIR ASTER bands. The use
of the 12 most important bands (2 less than all 14 ASTER bands)
resulted in a 10% increase in classification accuracy indicating that
the quality of the input bands is more important than the total
number of input bands for classification of rock units in the study
area. Combination of four datasets (37 bands) led to reach the
highest overall accuracy (81.52%) where it was 4.31% more than the
455
most important bands (with only 12 bands). The numbers of
combined datasets bands were three times more than the most
predictors (i.e. 37 bands vs. 12 bands) where a difference between
accuracy was less than 5%. This means that large amounts of in-
formation were enclosed in important predictor bands and other
bands had lower role in classification. With respect to capability of
RF classifier to calculate the most significant predictors, a reason-
able accuracy can still be achieved with only the most significant
bands. The most predictive ASTER bands were mainly bands 4, 5, 6,
10, and 12 indicting the importance of the SWIR and TIR regions for
distinguishing rock units in the study area. Spectral features of the
most predictive SWIR bands are mainly due to Al-O-H content of
rock forming minerals (Mars and Rowan, 2006). Silicate minerals of
rocks in the study area (i.e. granite, diorite, andesite, and basalt)
cause clear absorption emissivity in bands 10 and 12 (Ninomiya
et al., 2005; Watanabe and Matsuo, 2003).
In this study an uncertainty map was used to delete or mask
pixels that showed high variability in the RF classification resulting
in some areas that were not classified. This map showed that 21.43%
of all pixels had variability 66% (i.e. the same class in two classified
maps) where they were spatially diverse over the all rock units. This
indicated that variability didn't occur in a specific class and all
classes include some of high variable pixels (blue pixels in Fig. 4).
Classification accuracies achieved in this study are reliable
because the results were based on an independent set of training
areas as well as independent field observations. In addition, great
care was taken in the selection of training areas from the legacy
geological map, enhancements of the ASTER imagery and field
observations to ensure that each training area was representative of
each rock type.
6. Conclusions
This study indicates that ASTER data can be used successfully to
456 F. Masoumi et al. / Journal of African Earth Sciences 129 (2017) 445e457
classify different rock types in remote regions where rocks are well
exposed and spectrally distinct. Various combinations of the raw
and derived ASTER data were produced and tested for their role in
improving classification accuracies. Classification accuracies were
improved by integrating band ratios, texture features, and PCs
along with the ASTER raw bands noting that the RF classifier avoids
overfitting due to the bagging process and the random selection of
input bands for each tree. The highest classification accuracy of
67.12% was achieved using the band ratios whereas the PCs resulted
in the lowest classification accuracy (53.4%). The calculation of
various textural parameters did not lead to high classification ac-
curacy when used alone; however they resulted in marginally
higher accuracies when integrated with the raw ASTER.
Producing an uncertainty map on the basis of four classified
maps revealed that 21.43% of pixels were highly uncertain (vari-
ability of 66%) and were distributed over all classes throughout the
entire study area.
The RF classifier indicated the 12 most predictive variables of
different rock types in the study area included ASTER bands 4, 12,
10, 6, 5, band ratios (7þ9)/8, 4/6, (5þ7)/6, 5/8, PC1, and correlation
and mean textures features. Use of these 12 variables resulted in an
overall classification accuracy of 77.21%. Classification of four
combined datasets (37 bands) resulted in an overall classification
accuracy of 81.52% that was only 4% more than the 12 most pre-
dictive variables. Field investigation confirmed the high classifica-
tion accuracy of the two main rock units in the study area (gd and
Eaf).
Acknowledgments
We would like to acknowledge two anonymous reviewers who
provided a critical review of an earlier version of the manuscript
and have greatly improved the quality. The first author would like
to express sincere thanks to Mr. Vahid Eisavai in Remote Sensing
Department, Tarbiat Modaress University, for his comments and
assistance of an earlier draft of this paper.
Appendix A. Supplementary data
Supplementary data related to this article can be found at http://
dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jafrearsci.2017.01.028.
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