Methodology for the Extraction and Analysis of Geological Lineaments Using Remote Sensing and Free Software

The study of geological lineaments has a great scientific interest, these control the distribution of regional groundwater, geological hazards, geothermal energy, earthquakes, etc. The technology of extraction of geological lineaments is of great importance for the analysis of the movement of regional plates and oil, gas and hydrogeology exploration. However, these technologies are dominated by licensed software, in this paper a semi-automatic methodology is proposed using free software, taking asa study area the geothermal prospectus of the Paka volcano, located in the center of the Rift of Kenya with the help of images from the Landsat 8 OLI Satellite and a DEM obtained from the ALOS PALSAR sensor of the ASF satellite. The experimental results showed that the orientation of the lineaments was dominated by NNE – SSW complemented by NE – SW. Under the influence of Kenya’s Rift regional fault, the lineaments were distributed mainly over linear landforms, coinciding with previous studies in the area.