Unsupervised soft clustering of high resolution airborne geophysical and satellite data suites from the Sperrgebiet, Karas region, Southern Namibia, to enhance lithology mapping

Sand cover in arid regions and thick weathering in the tropics have always posed an obstacle to conventional mapping where the use of aerial photographs in combination with field visits is standard practise. In recent years, however, with the availability of large multi-parameter high resolution earth science related data sets acquired from space or aircraft, the upgrading of conventionally mapped geology is now feasible. Contrary to space-borne and hyper-spectral imagery, airborne geophysics has the ability to penetrate tropical weathering or extensive sand layers lying on hidden bedrock. Furthermore, airborne geophysical data, such as magnetic, gravity or conductivity data, provide information not only from the surface but also from the sub-surface thus enabling geological mapping at selected depth levels.