China Conserves its Water Resources Using ERDAS

22 June 2010, 8:09am

Norcross, GA - The Ministry of Water Resources of the People's Republic of China recently announced a project that uses ERDAS IMAGINE to facilitate conserving and protecting China's water resources.

ERDAS IMAGINE is being used to identify the areas where the water is being adversely affected by soil erosion. Beijing Digital LandView Company Limited, the authorized ERDAS distributor in China, assisted the customer for this project.

The traditional method for monitoring water resources involves taking water samples and determining the amount of silt present. This helps scientists evaluate the water quality and the degree of soil erosion. However, the experts at the Ministry have since recognized that they could employ remote sensing technology to improve the efficiency and accuracy of this monitoring. Although the ministry received recommendations for many different software applications, including some that are locally produced, Beijing Digital LandView showcased the advanced technical capabilities of ERDAS IMAGINE, which won the honor of being the only foreign-made software selected for this project.

The geographical area of the project included the Huai, Song-Liao, and Zhujiang river basins and the Taihu Lake. The Ministry and 18 of its provincial monitoring stations used ERDAS IMAGINE to analyze a digital elevation model (DEM) of the area and classify the structure of the rock, soil, vegetation and land use in the project area. They used the ERDAS IMAGINE Model Maker to obtain the soil erosion factors in the images. ERDAS IMAGINE Knowledge Engineer enabled them to automate the process followed to evaluate the DEM, vegetation type and soil erosion factor to determine the water quality and degree of soil erosion.

"ERDAS IMAGINE's powerful tools met all of the remote sensing needs in this project," said Jane Wu, General Manager of Beijing Digital LandView. "It has been incredibly valuable to the government's Ministry of Water Resources, providing a successful return on the government's investment."

ERDAS

Geo: International