Mapping Mineralization in the Monitor Pass Mining District

The Leviathan Mine, located in the Monitor Pass mining district in Alpine county California, was previously an open pit sulfur mine that supplied a nearby operation in Yerington, Nevada with sulfur for copper oxide leaching. The area was first mined underground in the mid 1800s and by the 1950s became an open pit operation. A decade later, the sulfur became uneconomic to extract, leaving the company bankrupt. By the 1980s, the EPA had declared Leviathan Mine a Superfund site due to acid mine drainage into Leviathan Creek. Remediation continues today, but high sulfur soils and the potential for acid generation is abundant in the Monitor Pass area. The discovery of iron sulfate on Mars motivated the acquisition of airborne and spaceborne data similar to datasets available for Mars. In addition, high spatial resolution mineral mapping could help identify high priority remediation targets within the mine site. Low resolution (30m per pixel) spaceborne data from ALI and ASTER sensors were combined into a 13-filter dataset to locate areas of interest and as an overview of the area. The combination of thermal infrared and shortwave infrared datasets optimizes the potential for mineral identification. Dual hyperspectral acquisitions were acquired in July and August 2007. SEBASS thermal data (7-15µm) and ProSpecTIR V-S (0.43- 2.45 µm) were both at 2 m per pixel. The thermal data over Leviathan Mine was processed using remote sensing software in a similar method used in the spaceborne data. Nine endmembers were selected and a thematic map was produced that showed unique areas of clay and sulfate dominated mineralogy.