Monitoring The Usage Of The High Standard Farmland By High Resolution Remote Sensing:A Study Of Methods And Mechanisms

This thesis explores the usage and application of remote sensing to monitor illegal activities that occur on arable farmlands in China.Over recent years there have been rising concerns about usage and exploitation of agricultural farmland,it is clear that indeed China's farmlands are fading away faster.Hence the need for introduction of robust measures in order to mitigate and solve this phenomena.Many farmers have engaged in practices that has led to serious violations of farmland standards and regulations.This threat has been matched by high-level government policy declarations.For example,the law on water pollution prevention and control revised in 2008 made provisions for control of pollution of drinking-water sources,industrial pollution,agricultural non-point source pollution and ecological damage.Therefore the thesis assesses high standard farmland violations in northern(Baoding,Hebei)and southern(Dongguan,Guangdong)China by usage of high resolution remote sensing,and establishing mechanisms and methods on application of remote sensing dynamic monitoring of high standard farmland construction and utilization,including research on information extraction algorithm.The Chinese GF-2 satellite was the major data contributor in this project,as it is the most developed civil remote sensing satellite in China with a spatial resolution of more than 1 meter and features high radiation accuracy,high positioning accuracy and fast attitude manoeuvring capabilities,hence it was selected for the project.The investigation showed that both northern and southern China,Baoding county,Hebei Province and Dongguan city,Guangdong Province were found to be in violations of the farmlands standards as stipulated in the national land planning document,it was further discovered that even though the violations of standards existed in both provinces,were driven by different factors,Baoding,Hebei is less developed than Dongguan,Guangdong,most of the illegal activities found were violations for agricultural purposes like building of chicken hoops,shelters,walls etc.on arable land.On a contrary the Dongguan possessed a different challenge which is mainly due to economic activities in the area,high industrialization has seen the loss of arable land to make way for factories and high residential building areas.The study reached following outcomes:1.Remote sensing can be used as a tool for robust farmland standards monitoring campaign by the Lands and Resources ministry.2.Investigation discovered that even though both provinces had violations,the violations were motivated by different economic factors.3.The GF-2 high precision accuracy rate in the study obtained more than 97%accuracy.