APPLICATIONS OF REMOTE SENSING IN ENVIRONMENTAL INVESTIGATION AND CHANGE ANALYSIS IN THE THREE GORGES AREA

1. INTRODUCTION The proposed Three Gorges Project, one of the biggest hydroelectric projects in the world, will dam the middle reaches of the Changjiang (Yangtze) River, the third longest river in the world, and form a large reservoir. Its impacts on environment have attracted wide attention. Entrusted by National Scientific-Technical Commission, the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) was in charge of a research project on this issuse from 1984 to 1989. Tho use of remote sensing played an important role in the project considering the study area is mountainous and not convenientlv located, which makes it difficult to conduct the research onlv using conventional means.

Monitoring Forest Recovery in Protected Forests of Northern Côte d’Ivoire Using Landsat Imagery and Intensity Change Analysis

In this paper, the initiatives of reforestation of the national forests of the North of the Côte d’Ivoire were examined using geomatics and the analysis of change of intensity by taking the case of the protected Forest of Badénou (PFB). A spatial analysis based on multi-spectral and multi-temporal Landsat imagery was carried out to assess land cover changes in the (PFB) over the past two decades and determine whether patterns of change in terms of the intensity of gains/losses of each of the land cover classes were active or dormant between the period before (2000-2013) and after (2013-2019) the reforestation initiative. Five main classes were identified: forest (dry deciduous and gallery forests), tree savannah, shrub/grassy savannah (including agricultural lands), bare lands (bare soils and degraded land areas), and water course. All classes were satisfactorily classified, with an excellent producer’s and user’s and overall accuracies and very good Kappa coefficients. The results showed that between 2000 and 2019, the forest cover in the PFB increased from 7778 ha to 5054 ha, a decrease was marked between 2000 and 2013 of approximately 60% compared to its size in 2000, while a slight increase between 2013 and 2019 (4645 ha to 5054 ha) i.e. around 9%) certainly due to the reforestation since 2016. As for the annual intensities of change for each class in both study periods, changes (gain or loss) in forest and tree savanna were relatively dormant after reforestation, while annual bare land gain was relatively active and marked, indicating that degradation of forests remains a threat to the sustainability of the PFB. Forest degradation has occurred mainly in the eastern parts of the PFB, while the central parts have regained more tree cover. These results can help identify conservation and restoration priorities and improve the overall management of the PFB.

Assessing Spatio-Temporal Land Cover Changes in Dhund River Basin, Eastern Rajasthan (India), Using Multi-Temporal Landsat Data

Land cover is an impression of natural cover on surface of earth such as bare soil, river, grass etc. and utilization of these natural covers for various human needs and purposes by mankind is defined as land use. Land cover identification, delineation and mapping is important for planning activities, resource management and global monitoring studies while baseline mapping and subsequent monitoring is done by application of land use to get timely information about quantity of land that has been used. The present study has been carried out in Dhund river watershed of Jaipur, Rajasthan which covers an area of about 1828 sq∙km. The minimum and maximum elevation of the area is found to be 214 m and 603 m respectively. Land use and land cover changes of three decades from 1991 to 2021 have been interpreted by using remotes sensing and GIS techniques. ArcGIS software (Arc map 10.2), SOI topographic map, Cartosat-1 DEM and satellite data of Landsat 5 and Landsat 8 have been used for interpretation of eleven classes. The study shows an increase in cultivated land, settlement, waterbody, open forest, plantation and mining due to urbanization because of increasing demands of food, shelter and water while a decrease in dense forest, river, open scrub, wasteland and uncultivated land has also been marked due to destruction of aforementioned by anthropogenic activities such as industrialization resulting in environmental degradation that leads to air, soil and water pollution.

Geo-information Tupu Analysis of Land Use Change in Haihe River Basin

[Objective] This study was to provide basis for the scientific management of land use in Haihe River Basin （HRB） through the quantitative exploration of the land use conversion, changes of intensity and spatial distribution in this region. [Method] With the support of remote sensing technology and geographic information technology, the land use maps of the study area in 40 years （1970-2010） were in- terpreted and plotted. Four kinds of tupu, namely, land use change tupu, process tupu, arising tupu and evolution mode tupu were built through the spatial overlay of the land use maps to analyze the change rules of land use patterns. [Result] The conversion of arable land to construction land was the main characteristics of land use changes in HRB for the 40 years; the area of non-stable region accounted for 35% of the total, indicating that the land use changed remarkably, thus, it was nec- essary to strengthen the scientific land management in HRB; the new conversions to all land use patterns were all the lowest in 1980-1990, indicating that land use changed slowly during this period. [Conclusion] The results indicate that, compared with conventional transfer matrix method, geo-information tupu has obvious advantage in analyzing land use changes that it can demonstrate the spatial distribution of interest region, display the multi-dimensional spatial information.

Analysis on Change of the Vegetation Cover in Poyang Lake Area from 1991 to 2005

[Objective] The reseamh aimed to analyze variation of the vegetation cover in Poyang Lake area from 1991 to 2005. [Method] Based on Landsat TM remote sensing images of 1991 and 2005 in Poyang Lake area, NDVI dimidiate pixel model was used to calculate vegetation cover- age. By transfer matrix, temporal-spatial change of the vegetation cover grade in the area was analyzed. [ Result] Vegetation cover in this region overall presented increase trend from 1991 to 2005, and forestry area increased somewhat. But at the same time, farmland area decreased to some extent. Sandlot and bare land also increased slightly. [ Conclusion] Governments and relevant departments should reasonably allocate land re- sources and protect natural ecology environment.

NDVI changes in China between 1989 and 1999 using change vector analysis based on time series data

Change vector analysis (CVA) and principal component analysis in NDVI time-trajectories space are powerful tools to analyze land-cover change. The magnitude of the change vector indicates amplitude of the change, while its direction indicates the nature of the change. CVA is applied to two remotely sensed indicators of land surface conditions, NDVI and spatial structure, in order to improve the capability to detect and categorize land-cover change. The magnitude and type of changes are calculated in China from 1989 to 1999. Through the research, the main conclusions are drawn as follows: 1) The changes of NDVI are quite different between eastern China and western China, and the change range in the east is bigger than that in the west. The trend in NDVI time series is smoothly increasing, the increases happen mostly in Taiwan, Fujian, Sichuan and Henan provinces and the decreases occur in Yunnan and Xinjiang. 2) The spatial structure index can indicate changes in the seasonal ecosystem dynamics for spatially heterogeneous landscapes. Most of spatial structure changes, which occurred in southern China, correlated with vegetation growth processes and strike of mountains.

Analysis of the Climate Features and Changes of Heavy Fog in Wusu City

Based on the measured data of heavy fog in Wusu County during 1954-2009,its temporal and spatial distribution characteristics were analyzed.The results showed that heavy fog in Wusu mainly happened from later autumn to beginning of the next spring.The most was in December,the least was in January.It had significant regional features and seasonal distribution characteristics.However,the days of heavy fog was irregular,but it was accordant with the decrease trend of frog days in recent years in China,while it was not significant.The situations of high-altitude uniform pressure field and the surface pressure field had a direct relationship with the formation of heavy fog.

Response of fuzzy clustering on different threshold determination algorithms in spectral change vector analysis over Western Himalaya, India

Abstract： Change detection is a standard tool to extract and analyze the earth＇s surface features from remotely sensed data. Among the different change detection techniques, change vector analysis （CVA） have an exceptional advantage of discriminating change in terms of change magnitude and vector direction from multispectral bands. The estimation of precise threshold is one of the most crucial task in CVA to separate the change pixels from unchanged pixels because overall assessment of change detection method is highly dependent on selected threshold value. In recent years, integration of fuzzy clustering and remotely sensed data have become appropriate and realistic choice for change detection applications. The novelty of the proposed model lies within use of fuzzy maximum likelihood classification （FMLC） as fuzzy clustering in CVA. The FMLC based CVA is implemented using diverse threshold determination algorithms such as double-window flexible pace search （DFPS）, interactive trial and error （T＆E）, and 3x3-pixel kernel window （PKW）. Unlike existing CVA techniques, addition of fuzzy clustering in CVA permits each pixel to have multiple class categories and offers ease in threshold determination process. In present work, the comparative analysis has highlighted the performance of FMLC based CVA overimproved SCVA both in terms of accuracy assessment and operational complexity. Among all the examined threshold searching algorithms, FMLC based CVA using DFPS algorithm is found to be the most efficient method.

Use of Intensity Analysis to Measure Land Use Changes from 1932 to 2005 in Zhenlai County, Northeast China

Analyzing spatiotemporal dynamics of land use and land cover over time is widely recognized as important to better understand and provide solutions for social, economic, and environmental problems, especially in ecologically fragile region. In this paper, a case study was taken in Zhenlai County, which is a part of farming-pastoral ecotone of Northeast China. This study seeks to use multi-temporal satellite images and other data from various sources to analyze spatiotemporal changes from 1932 to 2005, and applied a quantitative methodology named intensity analysis in the time scale of decades at three levels: time interval, category, and transition. The findings of the case study are as follows: 1) the interval level of intensity analysis revealed that the annual rate of overall change was relatively fast in 1932–1954 and 1954–1976 time intervals. 2) The category level showed that arable land experienced less intensively gains and losses if the overall change was to have been distributed uniformly across the landscape while the gains and losses of forest land, grassland, water, settlement, wetland and other unused land were not consistent and stationary across the four time intervals. 3) The transition level illustrated that arable land expanded at the expense of grassland before 2000 while it gained intensively from wetland from 2000 to 2005. Settlement targets arable land and avoids grassland, water, wetland and other unused land. Besides, the loss of grassland was intensively targeted by arable land, forest land and wetland in the study period while the loss of wetland was targeted by water except for the time interval of 1976–2000. 4) During the early reclamation period, land use change of the study area was mainly affected by the policy, institutional and political factors, followed by the natural disasters.

Analysis and Representation of Changes in Change Detection

In this paper,factors lead to changes and what changes should be considered are firstly discussed.Then changes to be represented by set theory is given.Twelve basic change types are described in detail.At last the paper points out that the change between geo_objects and pixels in images is not all corresponding and it causes the difficulty of accurate and robust change detection techniques.

Analysis of sea level changes in the Caspian Sea related to Cosmo-geophysical processes based on satellite and terrestrial data

Analysis results of the average annual sea levels in the Caspian Sea obtained from ground and satellite observations, corresponding to solar activity characteristics, magnetic field data, and length of day are presented. Spectra of the indicated processes were investigated and their approximation models were also built. Previously assumed statistical relationships between space-geophysical processes and Caspian Sea level(CSL) changes were confirmed. A close connection was revealed between the low-frequency models of the solar and geomagnetic activity parameters and the CSL changes. Predictions extending into the next decades showed a high probability of an increase in the CSL and a decrease of the compared space-geophysical parameters.

Analysis of Runoff into Reservoir Change Pattern and Causes in Fenhe Reservoir

Based on the 58 years monthly flow data (from 1956 to 2013) editing by Jingle hydrological station of Fen River and Shangjinyou station, data resources are used to analyze the annual and inter-annual changes from spatial and temporal scale by statistical methods, mainly annual spatial and temporal distribution, trend of inter-annual changes, cycle and mutation changes. The reasons of runoff into reservoir changes are deeply analyzed by annual precipitation data of catchments above Fenhe Reservoir 1956 to 2013 and the land and water reservation methods which are implemented recently. It shows that there is a significant decrease of the inter-annual run-off with main and second cycle periods, 23a and 13a respectively. Furthermore, it exists mutation point between 1970 and 1971 through runoff series. As for further analysis of the causes of Fenhe Reservoir runoff changes, it illustrates that the change of precipitation is the main reason the facilitate runoff changes. Also, the land and water reservation methods which are implemented in upstream of Fenhe Reservoir increase water storage capacity of soil, showing it non-ignorable effect to runoff changes.

Increasing Ventilation by Passive Strategies: Analysis of Indoor Air Circulation Changes through the Utilization of Microclimate Elements

A demand for renewable alternatives that would be able to deal with the problems related to well-being is directly linked to the world’s growing needs to save energy and reduce environmental costs. For a project implementation addressing these issues, it is essential to know the climatic conditions of the target area. Taking natural ventilation, climatic factors, and renewable alternatives as important sources of comfort, in this work, passive strategies, through the utilization of microclimate elements as well as the location of outside obstacles, were imposed on an initial and specific project. The objective was to introduce obstacles which could interfere in the field of external wind and evaluate whether this outside intervention is able to make changes in indoor air circulation. The wind fields for the studied cases were obtained by computational simulations, and their consequences were analyzed to attain thermal comfort. The method adopted to obtain the wind fields was a Petrov-Galerkin type method, which is a stabilized mixed finite element method of the Navier-Stokes equations considering the incompressibility and formulated in primitive variables, velocity and pressure. The obtained results point to the solutions that promote the increase or decrease of the wind-field intensity.

Spatial and temporal variation of water clarity in typical reservoirs in the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region observed by GF 1-WFV satellite data

Rapidly monitoring regional water quality and the changing trend is of great practical and scientific significance,especially for the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei(BTH)region of China where water resources are relatively scarce and inland water bodies are generally small.The remote sensing data of the GF 1 satellite launched in 2013 have characteristics of high spatial and temporal resolution,which can be used for the dynamic monitoring of the water environment in small lakes and reservoirs.However,the water quality remote sensing monitoring model based on the GF 1 satellite data for lakes and reservoirs in BTH is still lacking because of the considerable differences in the optical characteristics of the lakes and reservoirs.In this paper,the typical reservoirs in BTH-Guanting Reservoir,Yuqiao Reservoir,Panjiakou Reservoir,and Daheiting Reservoir are taken as the study areas.In the atmospheric correction of GF 1-WFV,the relative radiation normalized atmospheric correction was adopted after comparing it with other methods,such as 6 S and FLAASH.In the water clarity retrieval,a water color hue angle based model was proposed and outperformed other available published models,with the R 2 of 0.74 and MRE of 31.7%.The clarity products of the four typical reservoirs in the BTH region in 2013-2019 were produced using the GF 1-WFV data.Based on the products,temporal and spatial changes in clarity were analyzed,and the main influencing factors for each water body were discussed.It was found that the clarity of Guanting,Daheiting,and Panjiakou reservoirs showed an upward trend during this period,while that of Yuqiao Reservoir showed a downward trend.In the influencing factors,the water level of the water bodies can be an important factor related to the water clarity changes in this region.

Analysis of the Maximum Continuous Precipitation Variation in Shenyang in 48 Years

[Objective] The aim was to study the changes of maximum continuous precipitation in Shenyang in recent 48 years.[Method] By dint of the daily precipitation from May to September from 1961 to 2008 and according to simple linear trend estimates and microwave analysis,the maximum consecutive precipitation in each month was analyzed.[Result] The frequency of extreme value for the maximum consecutive precipitation in Shenyang increased since 1990.The decreasing trend of maximum consecutive precipitation from May to September was consistent with that around 1990.The decrease of maximum consecutive precipitation amount had tendency to decrease along with the passing of time.There was 5 years temporal scale period of maximum consecutive precipitation from May to September in Shenyang.Maximum value occurred in 1973 and the minimum value occurred in 2000.[Conclusion] The study had important reality meaning to the understanding of climate changes in Shenyang and disaster prevention and relief work of extreme climate incidents.

Physiological Changes during the Process of Pericarp Browning in the Postharvest Litchi

[Objective] Pericarp browning in the postharvest litchi significantly reduced its commercial value and limited the expanding of litchi markets. Physiological changes during the process of pericarp browning were determined in order to identify the underlying mechanisms. [Method] Matured Feizixiao fruits were stored at 25 ℃ and 70%±5% relative humidity. The physiological changes happened in pericarp during storage were tested at an 8-hour interval. [Result] The fruit of Feizixiao (Litchi chinensis Sonn. cv Feizixiao) turned completely brown within 72 h after being harvested under the experimental conditions. Sharp increase of the browning index occurred from 48 to 64 hours after harvest (HAH). With the browning of pericarp,water content of the whole fruit and pericarp decreased continuingly. In contrast,there were no significant changes in the water content of pulp during the same period. MDA content,pH value and relative leakage rate of pericarp were increased during storage. Most of pigment contents including anthocyanin,flavonoid,phenols,chlorophyll a and total chlorophyll decreased. POD activity was initially increased in 32 HAH and then decreased afterwards. PPO activity was decreased continuously,while the activities of catalase and superoxide dismutase exhibited the pattern of 'increasing-decreasing-increasing' as the storage time progressed. Correlation,stepwise regression and path analyses showed that water loss of pericarp was the major factor of pericarp browning. Principal and cluster analyses showed that there were two stages of pericarp browning during the course of litchi storage. [Conclusion] Water status of pericarp was the most important factor affecting pericarp browning. The pericarp browning happened by stages,which was mainly determined by the water loss of pericarp.

Study on land use changes of the coal mining area based on TM image

Based on the two temporal TM images of 1995 and 2001 of one coal mining area,analyzed the variety information of the coal mining area.Relative registration were done with the two images firstly,then cut out the study area for experimental data,classi- fied the coal mining area using supervised classification in ERDAS,the coal mining area will be divided into five categories as water body,agricultural land,construction land,coal mining area and other land.Make land use change matrix,the result shows that in the six years of 1995 to 2001,the change of the utilize of the land is greatly,the main represent is showed as follows: the area of water body,agricultural land and coal mining land had con- tinually increased,on the contrary,construction area and other decreased.The percen- tage speed of the construction land is the biggest,the value reach-1.08%.The main rea- sons is that with the exploitation of the coal mine and the reclaim of the land,the exploita- tion of the coal mining land make the agricultural land and construction area convert into coal mining land,on the other hand with the backfill of the subsided waterlogged land and the reclaim of the subsided land make the coal mining land convert into agricultural land.

Spatial-temporal Changes of Vegetation Cover in Guizhou Province, Southern China

Guizhou Province is an important karst area in the world and a fragile ecological area in China. Ecological risk assessment is very necessary to be conducted in this region. This study investigates different characteristics of the spatial-temporal changes of vegetation cover in Guizhou Province of Southern China using the data set of SPOT VEGETATION(1999–2015) at spatial resolution of 1-km and temporal resolution of 10-day. The coefficient of variation, the Theil-Sen median trend analysis, and the Mann-Kendall test are used to investigate the spatial-temporal change of vegetation cover and its future trend. Results show that: 1) the spatial distribution pattern of vegetation cover in Guizhou Plateau is high in the east whereas low in the west. The average annual normalized difference vegetation index(NDVI) from west to east is higher than that from south to north. 2) Average annual NDVI improved obviously in the past 17 years. The growth rate of average annual NDVI is 0.028/10 yr, which is slower than that of vegetation in the country(0.048/10 yr) from 1998 to 2007. Average annual NDVI in karst area is lower than that in non-karst area. However, the growing rate of average annual NDVI in karst area(0.030/10 yr) is faster than that in non-karst area(0.023/10 yr), indicating that vegetation coverage increases more rapidly in karst area. 3) Vegetation coverage in the study area is stable overall, but fluctuates in the local scales. 4) Vegetation coverage presents a continuous increasing trend. The Hurst exponent of NDVI in different vegetation types has an obvious threshold in various elevations. 5) The proportion of vegetation cover with sustainable increase is higher than that of vegetation cover with sustainable decrease. The improvement in vegetation cover may expand to most parts of the study area.

Using multispectral landsat and sentinel-2 satellite data to investigate vegetation change at Mount St. Helens since the great volcanic eruption in 1980

Long-term analyses of vegetation succession after catastrophic events are of high interest for an improved understanding of succession dynamics. However, in many studies such analyses were restricted to plot-based measurements. Contrarily, spatially continuous observations of succession dynamics over extended areas and timeperiods are sparse. Here, we applied a change vector analysis(CVA) to investigate vegetation succession dynamics at Mount St. Helens after the great volcanic eruption in 1980 using Landsat. We additionally applied a supervised random forest classification using Sentinel-2 data to map the currently prevailing vegetation types. Change vector analysis was performed with the normalized difference vegetation index(NDVI) and the urban index(UI) for three subsequent decades after the eruption as well as for the whole observation time between 1984 and 2016. The influence of topography on the current vegetation distribution was examined by comparing altitude, slope angles and aspect values of vegetation classes derived by the random forest classification. WilcoxRank-Sum test was applied to test for significant differences between topographic properties of the vegetation classes inside and outside of the areas affected by the eruption. For the full time period, a total area of 516 km2 was identified as re-vegetated, whereas the area and magnitude of re-growing vegetation decreased during the three decades and migrated closer to the volcanic crater. Vegetation losses were mainly observed in regions unaffected by the eruption and related mostly to timber harvesting. The vegetation type classification reached a high overall accuracy of approximately 90%. 36 years after the eruption, coniferous and deciduous trees have established at formerly devastated areas dominating with a proportion of 66%, whereas shrubs are more abundant in riparian zones. Sparse vegetation dominates at regions very close to the crater. Elevation was found to have a great influence on the reestablishment and distribution of the vegetation classes within the devastated areas showing in almost all cases significant differences in altitude distribution. Slope was less important for the different classes-only representing significantly higher values for meadows, whereas aspect seems to have no notable influence on the reestablishment of vegetation at Mount St. Helens. We conclude that major vegetation succession dynamics after catastrophic events can be assessed and characterized over large areas from freely available remote sensing data and hence contribute to an improved understanding of succession dynamics.

Data processing and preliminary results of the Chang'e-3 VIS/NIR Imaging Spectrometer in-situ analysis

The Chang＇e-3 Visible and Near-infrared Imaging Spectrometer （VNIS） is one of the four payloads on the Yutu rover. After traversing the landing site during the first two lunar days, four different areas are detected, and Level 2A and 2B ra- diance data have been released to the scientific community. The released data have been processed by dark current subtraction, correction for the effect of temperature, radiometric calibration and geometric calibration. We emphasize approaches for re- flectance analysis and mineral identification for in-situ analysis with VNIS. Then the preliminary spectral and mineralogical results from the landing site are derived. After comparing spectral data from VNIS with data collected by the Ma instrument and samples of mare that were returned from the Apollo program, all the reflectance data have been found to have similar absorption features near 1000 nm except lunar sample 71061. In addition, there is also a weak absorption feature between 1750-2400nm on VNIS, but the slopes of VNIS and Ma reflectance at longer wavelengths are lower than data taken from samples of lunar mare. Spectral parameters such as Band Centers and Integrated Band Depth Ratios are used to analyze mineralogical features. The results show that detection points E and N205 are mixtures of high-Ca pyroxene and olivine, and the composition of olivineat point N205 is higher than that at point E, but the compositions of detection points S3 and N203 are mainly olivine-rich. Since there are no obvious absorption features near 1250 nm, plagioclase is not directly identified at the landing site.