Enhancement facilities of SPOT XS imagery in remote sensing geology: an example from the Sivas Tertiary Basin (central Anatolia/Turkey)

Abstract

The main goals of this study were to increase the data quality of the SPOT XS imagery for differentiation of several rock units and to expose the structural features of the southern part of the Sivas Tertiary Basin. With these aims, both edge enhancement and histogram equalized stretching filters were applied to SPOT XS imagery of the southern part of the basin. Various geological observations and kinematic fault measurements formed the field-based components of this work. In this study, evaluations of detailed mapping work and kinematic analyses of mesoscobic fault planes were realized together with the study of image processing data. This basin is one of the most studied and important Tertiary basins in central Anatolia due to Neotethyan evolutionary processes. When the tectonostratigraphic relationships of the study region were taken into consideration, the detailed geological interpretations were evaluated according to the concept of thrust tectonics. In this region, four different main thrust sheets, which moved from the south-east to the north-west, were distinguished. The most striking tectonostratigraphic and geomorphological phenomenon was observed in the contact zone of the Oligocene evaporitic sediments and Lower-Middle Miocene detritic series. Evaporites can be easily observed as decollement levels over the Lower-Middle Miocene series tectonically. The dominant compression direction for this region was exposed actively in a NW-SE direction after the Lower-Middle Miocene and was in agreement with the results of field and laboratory studies.