Remote sensing monitoring In the Three Gorges Reservoir Area

The Three Gorges Project is a backbone water resource project along the Yangtze River in China. The project has gained prominence at home and abroad not only in the comprehensive benefits, but also in the complexity and sensitivity of ecological and environmental impacts concerned. To investigate the impacts chronically, remote sensing technique was used to monitor the environmental changes and present a whole picture in the reservoir area with 57845 km². This paper summarizes the contents and outcomes of remote sensing monitoring, such as, land use and cover change, vegetation coverage, soil erosion, urban expansion in the area since the project was launched in 1992, and also the vegetation recovery in down-zone area when water level was raised. The corresponding ecological and environmental protection efforts in regional scale are showed.