The Study On Discrimination Of Degraded Grassland Using Remotely Sensed Image With Different Ground Resolutions

The issue of grassland degradation in North China becomes server gradually during past decades, which keeps society and economy from sustainable development in this region. The discrimination of degraded grassland is the key point for dealing with the problem. This paper showed a primary study on the degraded grassland diagnostics in typical steppe in Baiyinxile area of Inner Mongolia using remotely sensed data with different ground resolutions. With the support of software of remote sensing digital image processing and GIS, and of data integration among SPOT and TM (high ground resolution), MODIS (high temporal resolution), and field observations, the level of degraded grasslands was examined according to 3 criteria, i.e. the changes of above ground biomass (AGB), the changes of vegetation types (VT), and the combination of both AGB and VT. Some results were suggested as follows.1, The communities of typical steppe in study area were classified based on TWINSPAN and DCA results and filed observations. They were Leymus chinensis + Stipa krylovii + Cleistogenes squarrosa community, Stipa grandis + Leymus chinensis + Cleistogenes squarrosa community, Stipa grandis + Cleistogenes squarrosa + Leymus chinensis community, Stipa krylovii + Leymus chinensis + Cleistogenes squarrosa community, Stipa krylovii + Cleistogenes squarrosa + Artemisia frigida community, Cleistogenes squarrosa + Artemisia frigida + Stipa krylovii community, Artemisia frigida + Cleistogenes squarrosa community, Caragana microphylla - Stipa grandis + Cleistogenes squarrosa community, Caragana microphylla - Stipa krylovii + Cleistogenes squarrosa community,...