Integration of SAR (Sentinel -1a) and Optical (Sentinel -2a) Data for Lithology Discrimination in Arid Tracts of the Thar Desert (Nagaur, Rajasthan)

This study investigates the efficiency of integrated dual polarimetric SAR (Sentinel-1A) and optical (Sentinel-2A) data for discriminating lithological variations in the arid tract of the Thar Desert (Nagaur, Rajasthan). Textural analysis and Principal Component Analysis (PCA) was performed on both SAR and optical data, respectively. Different RGB colour composite images were created using various textural features computed from SAR and principal components (PC) which were obtained from Sentinel-2A data as well as after integration of textures and principal components. Optimum band combinations were then chosen after evaluating different RGB colour composites in order to discriminate different lithological units. Finally, results obtained after analysis have been verified with a published lithology map of the study area which shows good similarity with results presented in this work.