Journal of Remote Sensing & GIS

Using a HAA-based multi-payload synchronized observation system to monitor grasslands on Qinghai plateau

3^rd World Congress on GIS and Remote Sensing

September 20-21, 2017 Charlotte, USA

Aiwu Zhang

Capital Normal University, China

Posters & Accepted Abstracts: J Remote Sensing & GIS

Abstract:

Background: Qinghai Province has 36.45 million hectares of natural grasslands, various grass species and enriched nutritive value. However, Qinghai Province is located on Qinghai plateau and the most parts of it locate at an average elevation of 3500-4000m above sea level. The general manned aircrafts are hardly ever applied in remote sensing monitoring of Qinghai plateau for safety. The high altitude airship (HAA) is available; it can fly higher and fly lower, hover and stare, and carry a big multi-payload system to work on the plateau. Compared with the common UAV, security, load capacity and flight time of the high altitude airship (HAA) far exceeds those of common UAV. We choose a HAA as our airborne platform to develop a multi-payload synchronous observation system (ASQ-MPHAAS). Results: We did some experiments using ASQ-MPHAAS in Jinyintan grassland on Qinghai plateau. We captured VNIR hyperspectral images of 840 bands, SWIR hyperspectral images of 256 bands, multispectral images of 4 bands and RGB images at an ultrahigh spatial resolution of a few centimeters. Hyperspectral images were used to: (1) distinguish grass species and (2) compute nutrition components of grass. Multispectral images were used to calculate various vegetation indexes. RGB images were used to detect the livestock numbers. However, in the past, we usually used TM satellite images to monitor grasslands. Due to the limited spatial resolution and spectral resolution, only the different grassland types can be interpreted, but the grass species cannot be distinguished, the nutrient content of grass cannot be calculated and the livestock numbers cannot be detected. Conclusion: Remote sensing with ASQ-MPHAAS provides aerial images with sub-decimetre resolution and offers a potential data source for the plateau grassland mapping.

Biography :

Aiwu Zhang is a Professor at Capital Normal University. Her areas of interest lie in spatial information acquisition and application. Her research mainly focuses on the development of systems and techniques for remote sensing monitoring. Over the past years, she and her group have developed a series of 3D Lidar systems and a multi-payload synchronized observation system. She is also interested in remote sensing image processing, computer vision and super-resolution reconstruction.