Mapping known and potential mineral occurrences and host rocks in the Bonnifield Mining District using minimal cloud- and snow-cover ASTER data: Chapter E in Recent U.S. Geological Survey studies in the Tintina Gold Province, Alaska, United States, and

On July 8, 2003, the Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer (ASTER) sensor acquired satellite imagery of a 60-kilometer-wide swath covering a portion of the Bonnifield mining district within the southernmost part of the Tintina Gold Province, Alaska, under unusually favorable conditions of minimal cloud and snow cover. Although rocks from more than eight different lithotectonic terranes are exposed within the extended swath of data, we focus on volcanogenic massive sulfides (VMS) and porphyry deposits within the Yukon-Tanana terrane (YTT), the largest Mesozoic accretionary terrane exposed between the Denali fault system to the south of Fairbanks and the Tintina fault system to the north of Fairbanks. Comparison of thermal-infrared region (TIR) decorrelation stretch data to available geologic maps indicates that rocks from the YTT contain a wide range of rock types ranging in composition from mafic metavolcanic rocks to felsic rock types such as metarhyolites, pelitic schists, and quartzites. The nine-band ASTER visible-near-infrared region--short-wave infrared region (VNIR-SWIR) reflectance data and spectral matched-filter processing were used to map hydrothermal alteration patterns associated with VMS and porphyry deposit types. In particular, smectite, kaolinite, opaline silica, jarosite and (or) other ferric iron minerals defined narrow (less than 250-meter diameter) zonal patterns around Red Mountain and other potential VMS targets. Using ASTER we identified some of the known mineral deposits in the region, as well as mineralogically similar targets that may represent potential undiscovered deposits. Some known deposits were not identified and may have been obscured by vegetation or snow cover or were too small to be resolved.