Recently, the paper published by Prof. Gong Peng of the Department of Earth System Science (DESS) entitled “Finer resolution observation and monitoring of global land cover: first mapping results with Landsat TM and ETM+ data” published in “INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF REMOTE SENSING”was selected for Tsinghua University 2017 “Academic Paper Award in memory of Mei Yiqi".

This article is the first paper on 30 m global land cover mapping. A series of advanced concepts and techniques have been used: (1) The design concept of a global land cover classification system is firstly proposed based on land cover feature, coverage, altitude, and photosynthesis intensity, which makes the use of our land cover mapping results more flexibly in the land surface process model. (2) Global Analyst software is developed, which can simultaneously processing remote sensing image and GIS data based on Google Earth. Moreover, customized functions for particular applications can be added into Global Analyst. (3) A training sample database are constructed by the interpreters through freely traversing 9,000 satellite images. (4) A testing sample database is constructed in a systematic unaligned manner with predetermined fixed locations. (5) Neighbouring scenes, which meet the spatial and temporal criteria, are used to augment training samples for each scene. (6) A variety of outstanding classification algorithms are experimented, and the supercomputer is employed for processing. However, because each image element uses only a single-time TM or ETM+ data, the result only represents the land cover type at the image acquisition time. Therefore, the resulting land cover types that are not at the "greenest" or "wettest" season may not be people’s most wanted types. In addition, farmland at none-farming season is often classified as bare. In the 500 papers published in this journal in 2013, Professor Gong Peng ranked first in the respect of the number of downloads. Up to March 17, 2018, this paper has been cited by 365 times in total, and 343 times by others.

The selection criteria have been revised in 2017, which places greater emphasis on the representativeness, academic influence, and the coverage of disciplines. Thirty outstanding papers from different departments of the Tsinghua University were selected for this year’s award. The list of winners is as follows:

The infomation of Prof. Gong Peng’s paper is as follows: