Dynamic monitoring of wetland in Maqu by means of remote sensing

In this paper, the spatial distribution and changes of Maqu wetlands were acquired by use of landsat-5 TM and landsat-7 ETM+ data in 1990, 1994, and 2001, and using GIS techniques and the Stepwise Discriminant Analysis of spatial- statistics, which based on seven variables, including band-1, band-2, band-3, band-4, band-5, band-7, and altitude, and avoided the lose and overlap of information. It was found that the extent of Maqu wetlands in 1990, 1994, and 2001 was 1151.70, 1103.25, and 1049.32 km², respectively, which decreased with a ratio of 0.74% during 1990 and 2001. Preliminary analysis based on the meteorological data was carried out and showed that warming and arid climate and human activities played important roles in the wetland degradation over Maqu county.