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

• Main Authors: B. Ma, X. Guo, J. Jiang, D. Culibrk, S. Ding, M. Vilotic, Y. Li
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Copernicus Publications 2021-06-01
• Series: The International Archives of the Photogrammetry, Remote Sensing and Spatial Information Sciences
• Online Access: https://www.int-arch-photogramm-remote-sens-spatial-inf-sci.net/XLIII-B3-2021/817/2021/isprs-archives-XLIII-B3-2021-817-2021.pdf

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 <i>rail-intensive countries</i> and <i>small-area countries</i> along the railway are discussed. Our results show that the environmental degradation can be detected in most of the <i>rail-intensive countries</i>, 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.