A Review of Remote Sensing for Environmental Monitoring in China

Abstract

The natural environment is essential for human survival and development since it provides water resources, land resources, biological resources and climate resources etc. As a developing country, China has witnessed a significant change in the natural environment in recent decades; and therefore, monitoring and mastering the status of the environment is of great significance. Due to the characteristics of large-scale and dynamic observation, remote sensing technology has been an indispensable approach for environmental monitoring. This paper reviews the satellite resources, institutions and policies for environmental monitoring in China, and the advances in research and application of remote sensing from five aspects: ecological index retrieval, environmental monitoring in protected areas, rural areas, urban areas and mining areas. The remote sensing models and methods for various types of environmental monitoring, and the specific applications in China are comprehensively summarized. This paper also points out major challenges existing at the current stage: satellite sensor problems, integrated use challenges of datasets, uncertainty in the retrieval process of ecological variables, scaling effect problems, a low degree of automation, the weak ability of forecasting and comprehensive analysis, and a lack of computational power for massive datasets. Finally, the development trend and future directions are put forward to direct the research and application of environmental monitoring and protection in the new era.

Light and Autofluorescence, Multitasking Features in Living Organisms

“…This is for example the case of space earth satellite observation of chlorophyll fluorescence combined with the use of data statistics to monitor the heat induced stress on the yield of wheat in India [65]. The remote sensing-based procedures, however, have been recommended to pay attention to additional factors, in particular to the atmospheric effects and consequent need for correction, as well as attention to the validation of fluorescence retrieval methods developed from large data measured on different kinds of vegetal samples [66]. The main fluorophores described in this section are summarized in Table 2.…”

Remote Sensing of Agricultural Greenhouses and Plastic-Mulched Farmland: An Analysis of Worldwide Research

“…In this context, plastic-covered agriculture (food component) will play a relevant role, and a growing demand is anticipated to develop efficient and precise mapping and monitoring tools to determine the spatio-temporal locations of production/consumption units (e.g., greenhouse structures and associated crops). Since conventional methods for the development of inventories of production units based on in situ studies (ground-monitoring) are expensive and inefficient, they are being replaced by semi-automatic methods based on machine learning technology applied to geo-referenced digital information commonly extracted from the growing industry of satellite imagery [17,19].…”

“…The mentioned transition requires a deep understanding of the spatio-temporal distribution of plastic covered crops. Here, remote sensing seems to be the only feasible approach to obtain information on its impact on climate and environment in a large geographic area [17][18][19]. However, due to the peculiar characteristics of plastic coverings, such as different material and spectral signatures, types of crops and phenological status, age, state of conservation, and cleanliness of the plastic film, and local agricultural practice, remote sensing-based mapping of this particular type of land cover is still pending, judging by the increasing number of scientific works produced in the last few years [20].…”

A Unified Framework for Anomaly Detection of Satellite Images Based on Well-Designed Features and an Artificial Neural Network

“…Wide space coverage, short revisit period, rich band information, and fine resolution have contributed positively to remote sensing's extensive applications in many fields such as land inspection, city planning, weather forecasting, hydrological observation, and military reconnaissance [1]. Since China begun to develop its remote sensing satellites in the 1970s, the number of remote sensing satellites, both state-owned and commercial, has exploded [2]. The growing satellite image products make image quality a top priority.…”