Digital Prospecting

* the ground resolution can be up to 100 times better and can be chosen to suit requirements; * the area covered can be selected and is not subject to t he vagaries of the field of view of a particular orbital track;

* the timing (month, day, hour) of data acquisition can be selected and be adjusted to compensate for weather conditions, unlike the approximate two weeks between repeat overpasses of a satellite;

* the technology of the sensor and, therefore, the significance of the data obtained, are about 15 years more advanced; and

* the data can be kept proprietary.

Canadian resource exploration companies have, in fact, a tremendous advantage over their counterparts in other countries because all the world’s best airborne digital imagers available for commercial services have been developed and are situated here in Canada. MONITEQ developed one of them, the Fluorescence Line Imager (FLI) programmable multispectral imager (PMI), for the Department of Fisheries and Oceans to measure ocean color. We have been successfully offering services of data acquisition and data processing with it for geological applications over land (because of the imager’s ability to satisfy a wide range of applications) for several years. It has been used principally for geobotany and also for lineament detection and environmental assessment.

In addition, we offer the services of another system with which we can provide accurate georeferenced imagery in digital mosaics.

Airborne optical digital imagery, coupled with the power of image analysis and geographic information systems described in the June article, is a powerful tool which is available in Canada for use by the geological community. We have been conducting workshops and meeting exploration companies in various parts of the country to ensure that people are aware of what can be done and what is available today, but we trust that more people will learn about its advantages from actual working experience. R. A. H. Buxton, PhD, Marketing, MONITEQ, Concord, Ont.

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