The thesis“China’s wetland change(1990-2000) determined by remote sensing” was honored second prize of the 2014 annual best paper by China Science Magazine: Earth Science. The best papers are selected from thesis published in China Science Magazine: Earth Science (English Edition) and evaluated with a principle combining with science indicators for quantitative evaluation and peer review.

This thesis has completed two remote sensing maps of the wetlands distributed in China, calculated the uncertainty of wetlands’ changing between two reference year, and analyzed the driving force based on the US Landsat data from 1990 to 2000 around. And the result showed that wetland area in China had decreased 14% in ten years. Except the artificial wetlands increasing, all the other types of wetlands decreased, especially Heilongjiang, Inner Mongolia and Jilin provinces. The reason why wetlands decreased heavily is that natural wetlands have been converted to agricultural and pastoral lands. And global warming and glacier melting may cause the area increasing in Xinjiang, Tibet and Qinghai provinces. This work has a notable significance for it not only can be the foundation of long-term research in wetlands in China, but also can supply important data parameters for biology diversity, diseases spreading, environment protecting, climate changing and other related research fields. Once published, the paper raised widespread concern of scientific community and society, and promoted the research and protection of wetlands in China.

news link：

http://www.scichina.com/new_web_Fa/news.asp?id=1754

thesis link：

http://earth.scichina.com:8080/sciDe/EN/abstract/abstract418101.shtml