Environmental geological remote sensing and GIS analysis of tropical karst areas in Vietnam

One of the most effective tools for environmental studies in mountainous areas, especially tropical karst mountainous areas, is remote sensing and GIS. Remote sensing and GIS technologies are scientifically established tools, but are not yet routinely used in environmental analysis, monitoring and impact analysis. The here presented remote sensing and GIS supported environmental analyses consist of methods for image transformation, image fusion, lineament extraction, time series, and change detection analysis. Based on the characteristics of lineaments, which are captured from the satellite images, the geological structure of a karst area in NW-Vietnam is studied in detail. Time series and change detection analysis is applied for studying land cover changes. The groundwater recharge and discharge zones are defined by the technique of image transformation.