A Report on Remote Sensing Monitoring of China's Sustainable Development (2016) was released by the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) on June 12, 2017, as the first report of its kind published in China, in the form of a green book.
The green book is a collection of remote sensing monitoring results completed by scientists from the Institute of Remote Sensing and Digital Earth (RADI). The monitoring focuses on seven of the twenty-five economic and social indicators outlined by the national "13th Five-Year Plan" (2016-2020), aiming to establish a set of evaluation indices for China's sustainable development, therefore providing a reference for central and local governments in decision-making, policy deployment and related evaluations.
The seven monitoring fields cover land use, vegetation, urbanization, atmospheric pollution, grain production, water use and water environment protection.
The report generalizes the changes of land use in China, including its offshore islands in the past 30 years, spatiotemporal characteristics of its vegetation distribution from 2001 to 2014, air quality from 2010 to 2015, water resources and water quality from 2000 to 2015, and grain production trends from 2010 to 2015.
The report also elaborates on the changes in land use and vegetation distribution on provincial scales, the regional atmospheric conditions of China's typical urban agglomeration, the grain production in the main grain-producing areas, the water benefits and loss in China's typical watersheds and the water environment. Remote sensing monitoring of the development of the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region as a collaborative innovation community is also discussed in the report.
The remote sensing data used in the report comes from China's domestically developed satellites, which cover specific fields including resources and the environment and seas and oceans, in combination with high-resolution Earth observation satellites, as well as a variety of foreign satellites.
Remote sensing technology, capable of Earth observation at regional or global scales, has been widely applied to monitor resources and the environment, socio-economics, and other fields. The surging domestic demand for remote sensing satellite data has also fueled the development of China's Earth observation.
With the development of China's High-Resolution Earth Observation System Project and the continuous improvement of space-based observation infrastructures, China is building an Earth observation system featuring high-temporal, high-spatial and high-spectral resolutions combined with powerful ground observation. For example, the latest GF-4 satellite launched in December 2015 is capable of geostationary Earth observation with a temporal resolution of minutes, and spatial resolution up to 50 meters.
These advances, no doubt, will “facilitate the dynamic remote sensing monitoring of China's sustainable development", says Prof. GU Xingfa, Executive Deputy Director of RADI and co-editor-in-chief of the book.
In addition, the large amount of scientific data presented in the report, which was independently completed by RADI as a national research institution and impartial third party, are "scientific and objective", emphasizes Prof. GU.
Starting with this 2016 report, the green book series of remote sensing monitoring will be updated annually to follow the implementation of the national 13th Five-Year Plan.
