LINEAMENTS IN GROUNDWATER EXPLORATION: A REVIEW OF APPLICATIONS AND LIMITATIONS

Abstract

Numerous definitions of the term ‘lineament’ are given in literature and various attributes are sometimes linked to the term—such as ‘geologic lineament’, ‘tectonic lineament’, ‘photo lineament’ or ‘geophysical lineament’—either describing the assumed origin of the linear feature or sometimes the data source from which it has been derived. Some workers also use the term ‘fracture trace’ or ‘photo linear’ as an alternative term. The work by Lattman and Parizek (1964) is commonly regarded as pioneering work in groundwater exploration; they mapped linear features (fracture traces) on stereo-pairs of aerial photographs in carbonate terrain in the eastern United States, and subsequently showed the correlation between well productivity and distance to the identified features. Lineament mapping was used long before this work in other geological applications and the first usage of the term lineament in geology is probably from a paper by Hobbs (1904), who defined lineaments as significant lines of landscape caused by joints and faults, revealing the architecture of the rock basement. This was later used by O’Leary et al. (1976) and Waters et al. (1990) as a basis for developed definitions.