Mineral and structural mapping of the Aynak-Logar Valley (eastern Afghanistan) from hyperspectral remote sensing data and aeromagnetic data

The Aynak-Logar Valley is located about 30 km south of Kabul in Afghanistan and contains the Aynak copper– cobalt deposit. Satellite remote sensing data obtained from Landsat Enhanced Thematic Mapper (ETM+) and DEM extracted from the Shuttle Radar Topography Mission (SRTM) were used to study the surface geology, while regional aeromagnetic data were used to identify the main magnetic sources in the region. The main magnetic anomaly appeared to originate at a depth of less than 1 km, although the coarse 1- km spacing of the gridded aeromagnetic data makes it difficult to be more precise. Other magnetic anomalies in the data were identified using a variety of edge-enhancement filters, 2.5D forward modeling, and 3D inversion model.