Kaolinitic Index

Geological index for detecting kaolinitic minerals and alteration zones. Uses shortwave infrared bands to identify clay mineral distributions in geological formations. Geological indices identify mineral compositions and lithological features by targeting diagnostic absorption features in shortwave infrared wavelengths. Different minerals produce unique spectral signatures that these indices isolate. Kaolinitic is particularly suited for geological mapping, mineral exploration, clay mineral detection. The general formula is SWIR2 / SWIR1, which requires SWIR1 and SWIR2 spectral bands.

Kaolinitic is supported by 1 satellite sensor in our database, including WorldView 3. Each sensor uses different band designations — for example, WorldView 3 uses the formula SWIR8 / SWIR5. Select a sensor above to see its specific band mapping.

Kaolinitic requires SWIR1 (2145-2185 nm), SWIR2 (2235-2365 nm). These specific wavelength regions correspond to diagnostic mineral absorption features caused by electronic transitions and vibrational overtones in crystal lattices.

Both Python and R code samples are provided above. In Python, use rasterio to load individual band GeoTIFF files and numpy for the arithmetic. In R, the terra package handles raster operations efficiently. The key is to load bands as floating-point arrays to avoid integer division, and to handle division-by-zero cases where the denominator equals zero. For production use, consider applying a valid data mask to exclude no-data pixels before calculation.

Geological index for detecting kaolinitic minerals and alteration zones. Uses shortwave infrared bands to identify clay mineral distributions in geological formations. For accurate mineral identification, this index should be used alongside other geological indices and validated with field samples or known geology maps. Spectral unmixing or supervised classification using multiple indices typically yields more reliable results than any single index alone.