Applications of Environmental Remote Sensing by HJ-1C SAR Imageries

The HJ-1C satellite was successfully launched in November 19, 2012. The HJ-1C and HJ-1A/1B satellites, which were launched in September 06, 2008, constitute the 2+1 small satellite constellation for environmental and disaster monitoring. This study focuses on the analysis and evaluation of the satellite performance with respect to environmental remote sensing, including land use interpretation, land cover classification, oil spill identification, retrieval of sea waves, and monitoring of coastal mariculture. The data used in this study cover the city of Beijing and the sea of the Fujian Province. Nine HJ-1C satellite images (level-2, S band, VV Pol, strip mode, 5 m resolution) from December 2012 to January 2013 are used. The conclusions are as follows: (1) the HJ-1C SAR images can be used to manually identify farmland, woodland, roads, rivers, urban construction, and rural residential areas; (2) the accuracy of the automatic land cover classification increased significantly when the HJ-1C SAR and HJ-1B CCD fusion images are used; (3) the HJ-1C satellite can be used to identify oil spills, to invert wave parameters, and to extract information regarding inshore aquaculture.