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Landsat-identified linear features. Color anomalies on the computer-
enhanced Landsat imagery account for 72 percent of these known mineral
occurrences. Some of the observed color anomalies coincide with areas
of known geochemical alteration and some of the remaining anomalies
constitute "resource targets."
Russian scientists are working in a cooperative program with
counterparts in the United States in their test areas, Balkhash, Tien-
Shan, the Caucasus, and Ustyurt (Study of the natural environment by
spacecraft, 1975). In general, the Russian scientists are reaching the
same conclusions that are being reached by scientists in the United
States and other parts of the world--that many of the megalinears we
are now seeing and mapping are very deep structures, perhaps extending
to the mantle. Further, they are speculating that these structures may
serve as major conduits for transmission of mineralized fluids to the
surface, and that as Sikabonyi and Rogers (1959) have noted, lineaments
as reflections of basement weakness zones may indicate where weakness
zones have affected paleotopography and therefore influenced paleo-
depositional conditions. Since fluid hydrocarbon accumulations require
proper lithologic conditions, knowledge of basement topography is of the
utmost importance in the search for hydrocarbons to help define zones of
changing lithologic conditions.
The structural geologic results that are coming from the Landsat
data seem to be substantiating the thought advanced in the last report
to ISP, that at the scales and resolutions of Landsat we seem to be
coming in harmony with a fundamental fabric of the Earth.
Exploration and development in the marine environment is a special
case involving transportation monitoring, as well as exploration. A
listing of established or potential applications of Landsat data to
offshore activities follows:
1) Analysis of coastal dynamics in terms of: a) shoreline changes
and b) nearshore current patterns, directions, and relative intensities;
2) location of manmade objects or small land masses in the oceanic
areas, with respect to other features of known location;
3) improvement in the charting of shallow seas (15-20 m in depth):
4) monitoring of onshore environmental changes (including land use)
resulting from offshore development;
5) monitoring of suspended sediment generation and dispersal;
6) improvement of offshore geophysical surveys by providing infor-
mation on location and strike of large, previously unmapped, and possibly
fundamental crustal structures on land that extend into the sea.
15