We attempt to identify thermal anomalies using thermal infrared (TIR) data collected over the Coso Geothermal Power Project with the spaceborne ASTER instrument. Our analysis emphasizes correc-tions for thermal artifacts in the satellite images caused by topography, albedo, and thermal inertia. This approach leads to noise reduction and has the potential to reveal thermal anomalies which are weak or not distinguishable in the uncorrected imagery. We have carried out field experiments concurrent with the collection of pairs of daytime and nighttime ASTER images over Coso. The field data include subsurface temperature measured with temperature probes at depths down to 1 m, surface temperatures recorded with a hand-held infrared camera and an infrared thermometer, reflectance of contrasting sur-faces measured with a hand-held spectroradiometer for the purpose of estimating the albedo effect, and radiosonde atmospheric profiles of temperature, wa-ter vapor, and pressure in order to apply atmospheric corrections to the images. The combined use of re-mote sensing and field data is intended to evaluate the performance of remote sensing as a cost-effective geothermal exploration tool. We reason that if reli-able thermal anomalies are identified at Coso, we can subsequently search for similar markers in TIR data collected over areas of unknown geothermal potential between Coso and Mono Lake in eastern California.

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