Hyperspectral remote sensing of the arid environments on Earth and Mars
Start: 01 October 2025
End: 30 September 2026
Supervisors :
Stéphane Jacquemoud, Sylvain Douté
Related teams :
Planetology and Space Sciences
Related themes :
Earth System Science, Origins
Certain geological environments are shared by arid regions on Earth and ancient Mars. Hyperspectral remote sensing enables primary minerals of the original crust to be detected, as well as secondary hydrated phases that indicate a variety of geochemical conditions related to atmospheric, hydrological and volcanic processes. Many regions of interest on Mars, whose morphological and mineralogical features indicate past aqueous activity, have been studied for over a decade. However, the interpretation of mineral spectral signatures is sometimes ambiguous and the quantitative estimation of mineral abundances is uncertain due to the strong influence of surface physical conditions on the reflectance spectra and the lack of ground truth. The Asal-Ghoubbet rift in the Republic of Djibouti is an arid region of planetary interest due to its igneous lithology, hydrothermal alteration and Holocene evaporitic deposits. Four EnMAP hyperspectral images of the rift were acquired between January and June 2024. This thesis has two main objectives: (i) improving our ability to map the surface mineral composition of contrasting arid environments in relation to surface physical properties such as sub-pixel surface roughness and soil/rock microtexture and (ii) undertaking comparative studies of the geological environments of Mars and Earth.
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