At the 96th Earth Observation and Digital Earth Forum held at RADI on January 13, Professor Prof. Tan Debao, Head of the Spatial Information Application Department of Changjiang River Scientific Research Institute affiliated with Changjiang Water Resources Commission, delivered an academic report entitled “A Study on Stereoscopic Monitoring of Changes in Greenhouse Gas Sources and Sinks around Large Reservoirs along the Yangtze River Valley”.
In recent years a number of cascade hydropower stations have been built along the Yangtze River Valley and have provided huge amounts of clean energy for national economic and social development, Tan says. However, construction of the power stations will lead to a series of changes in the natural ecological environment of the river; affect the carbon cycle of natural water bodies; cause changes in greenhouse gas sources and sinks; these undesirable effects will ultimately shake people’s traditional understanding of hydropower as a clean energy and therefore have drawn serious attention from both domestic and international academic communities, he points out.
He reported the work of stereoscopically monitoring the changes in greenhouse gas sources and sinks in and around large reservoirs and hydro-fluctuation belts along the Yangtze River Valley by means of in situ observation, laboratory analysis, aerial photography, satellite remote sensing, etc.; analyzed the spatial and temporal distribution of exchange flux of reservoir greenhouse gases; and evaluated important factors that influence the changes in greenhouse gas sources and sinks.
Professor Tan is mainly engaged in spatial information technology application research. To meet the needs of modernizing and comprehensively managing the water conservancy facilities in the Yangtze River Basin, he has been carrying out research on dynamic monitoring and assessing the river basin’s ecological environment, floods and droughts using spatial information technology, remote sensing, telemetry, computer networks, the Internet of things, wireless communication, cloud computing and other hi-tech methods.
