Inventory of dykes and their tectonic environment in S-Algeria, N-Mali and N-Niger based on a GIS embedded comparative analysis of remote sensing data

Although dykes are a predominant and widely distributed phenomenon in S-Algeria, N-Mali and N-Niger, a systematic, standardized inventory of dykes covering these areas has not been published so far. Remote sensing and geo information system (GIS) tools offer an opportunity for such an inventory. This inventory is not only of interest for the mining industry as many dykes are related to mineral occurrence of economic value, but also for hydrogeologic investigations (dykes can form barriers for groundwater flow). Surface-near dykes, major fault zones, volcanic and structural features were digitized based on Landsat 8 and 9, Sentinel 2, Sentinel 1 and ALOS PALSAR data. High resolution images of World Imagery files/ESRI and Bing Maps Aerial/Microsoft were included into the evaluations. More than 14,000 dykes were digitized and analyzed. The evaluations of satellite images allow a geomorphologic differentiation of types of dykes and the description of their characteristics such as dyke swarms or ring dykes. Dykes are tracing zones of weakness like faults and zones with higher geomechanically strain. Dyke density calculations were carried out in ArcGIS to support the detection of dyke concentrations as stress indicator. Thus, when occurring concentrated, they might indicate stressed areas where further magmatic and earthquake activity might potentially happen in future.