Thermal anomalies associated with faults: a case study of the Jinhua-Quzhou basin of Zhejiang Province, China

摘要

Faults provide the path for geothermal natural convection and partially influence the ground surface thermal environment. The land surface temperatures (LSTs) near a fault are higher than in other areas and can indicate the strike trend of an underground fault. However, these anomalies of higher LSTs are not located accu-rately in the fault centre but near it with some offset, and these LST data may include other thermal information that needs to be eliminated prior to analysis. In this study, LSTs were retrieved from Landsat Thematic Mapper (TM) and Enhanced Thematic Mapper Plus (ETM+) thermal infrared (TIR) images and enhanced with land cover classification and elimination. The spatial patterns of the enhanced images were compared with geophysical prospecting tectonic profiles and with regional geological tectonic maps, revealing the spatial correspondence between the thermal anomalies and the faults. The results indicated that the ther-mal anomalies are located near the faults and are consistent with the faults' dip planes.