Caltech/NHM Mineral VTIR Spectral Library

The Caltech/NHM Mineral VTIR Spectral Library was developed to address gaps in VTIR (visible to shortwave infrared and thermal infrared) spectral libraries used in remote sensing applications. Specifically, this library was generated to improve the retrieval of global, grain size separable, quartz and feldspar distributions using a Monte Carlo spectral mixing analysis (SMA) strategy. To address the gap in VTIR spectral libraries, we assembled the Caltech/NHM spectral library – a new dataset of 27 combined VTIR spectra of quartz and feldspar minerals with geochemical information about each specimen. Mineral specimens were sourced from and measured on x-ray diffraction (XRD) and x-ray fluorescence (XRF) at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County (NHM), and spectroscopic analyses were conducted at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech). This data package contains the raw spectra for all mineral samples, raw XRD and XRF data with ancillary files containing metadata, and photos of the specimens.