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China Reaches World's Advanced Level in Remote Sensing
China's remote sensing technology, which is widely used in the domestic grain output assessment, resource exploration and disaster monitoring, has reached the world's advanced level, said an expert from the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS).
Though China has a more complicated situation of crop cultivation, the accuracy of image and data processing of the grain output assessment in China is on a par with that in the United States and European countries, said Nie Yueping, a researcher from the Institute of Remote Sensing Application under the CAS.
He said that the institute used data from meteorological satellites to monitor the growth of winter wheat in 11 provinces and municipalities in north China during the 1986-1990 period, and provided important reference for the government's grain purchase plan in summer.
During the 1991-1995 period, the institute built an information system to monitor and estimate the output of the three major kinds of crops in China -- wheat, corn and paddy rise -- which account for more than 85 percent of the country's total grain output.
The institute is now able to provide services for monitoring and estimating the growth and output of crops all over the country.
Researchers at the institute also use satellite remote sensing techniques to monitor the expansion of urban areas and the illegal use of farmland for construction. In addition, remote sensing plays an important role in the monitoring and forecasting of natural disasters such as floods and drought.
"We have even used the technology to do some things which we had never expected to do," said Nie. "For example, we used it to help discover buried cultural relics."
Early this year, the institute provided remote sensing pictures of an ancient tomb in suburban Beijing to archeologists, who decided that there were other tombs of the same size near the original one.
Nie said that the next goal for the institute is to do global grain output assessment. With an estimation of grain output worldwide, China will be able to adjust the domestic grain growth and output accordingly, and thus play a better role in global economic integration.
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