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THE CHANGE OF HUANGHUAIHAI PLAIN OBSERVED BY LANDSAT IMAGES 
Changda Dai 
Remote Sensing Satellite Ground Station - CAS 
Remote Sensing Application Division 
45, Beisanhuan Xilu 
100086 - Beijing, China 
ISPRS Commission VII / Working Group 3 
ABSTRACT 
Huanghuaihai plain, the largest plain in China, also in Asia, is formed by three big rivers. Raised in ancient 
civilization, the region has a long history of development, but because of frequent occurrences of flood, water 
logging, soil salinization and sandy wind disasters, the agricultural yield was low and unstable. According to 
the data obtained from a detailed survey conducted by Chinese Academy of Sciences in the 1950's, the area of 
salinized lands amounts to 4,000,000 hec, sand dunes and drifting sand soil about 1,000,000 he. Both of them 
cover one-fourth of all cultivated lands. After three rivers and the vast plain were comprehensively harnessed, 
the low-yield situation of plain has been changed significantly. According to the low yield land distribution 
map based on twenty-six scenes of MSS images, acquired in the beginning of 1980's, the salinized soil cut 
down by more than two times and all of the sand dunes were fixed or half-fixed. Since the reform policy put 
in progress, the effectiveness of reclaim and exploitation becomes even more significant, especially in the 
coastal region. Many salinized lands were exploited for rice growing, shrimp breeding and salt production. 
All of these are appeared clearly on the enhanced color TM images. But the cultivated lands in the whole 
plain have decreased by about 0.7% per year according to landuse change information extracted from different 
data of TM images in several typical areas. 
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