The International Archives of the Photogrammetry, Remote Sensing and Spatial Information Sciences (Jun 2021)

LONG-TERM MONITORING OF ENVIRONMENTAL CHANGES ALONG CHINA-EUROPE RAILWAY EXPRESS (CER EXPRESS) USING MULTI-SOURCE REMOTELY SENSED DATA

  • B. Ma,
  • X. Guo,
  • J. Jiang,
  • D. Culibrk,
  • S. Ding,
  • M. Vilotic,
  • Y. Li

DOI
https://doi.org/10.5194/isprs-archives-XLIII-B3-2021-817-2021
Journal volume & issue
Vol. XLIII-B3-2021
pp. 817 – 822

Abstract

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The China-Europe Railway Express (CER-Express), not only promoted the cooperation between countries and regions across Asia and Europe but also gave rise to remarkable changes in landcover and had a profound effect on the natural environment along the railway in recent years. Effective ways to monitor and assess ecological changes are urgently needed to ensure sustainable development of CER-Express. There are very few existing environmental monitoring studies focusing on the area along the CERExpress. In this paper, we present a study of environmental degradation, which occurred during the construction and operation of CER-Express from 2010 to 2018, based on a comprehensive evaluation index (CEI), which takes three environmental indicators into account and provides a timely and reliable evaluation of environmental changes at large scales. In addition, the environment conditions of the regions and countries along the CER-Express have been quantified and comparatively studied at different scales over different periods, using histograms of mean CEI values. Furthermore, specific causes of environmental degradation in the rail-intensive countries and small-area countries along the railway are discussed. Our results show that the environmental degradation can be detected in most of the rail-intensive countries, such as Germany, Poland, Austria, and Czech Republic along the railway. Therefore, to ensure sustainability of the CER-Express, environmental protection along the railway should be paid more attention to and a reasonable arrangement for the exploitation of CER-Express devised.