The developing and desertification process of Minqin oasis is representative in the whole arid area of northwest China. Combining Remote Sensing image with Digital Elevation Model (DEM) can produce the three-dimensional image of the research area which can give prominence to the spatial background of historical geography phenomenon's distribution, providing the conditions for extracting and analyzing historical geographical information thoroughly. This research rebuilds the ancient artificial Oasis based on the three-dimensional images produced by the TM digital Remote Sensing image and DEM created using 1:100000 topographic maps. The result indicates that the whole area of the ancient artificial oasis in Minqin Basin over the whole historical period reaches 321km², in the form of discontinuous sheet, separated on the two banks of ancient Shiyang River and its branches, namely, Xishawo area, west to modern Minqin Basin and Zhongshawo area, in the center of the oasis. Except for a little of the ancient oasis unceasingly used by later people, most of it became desert. The combination of digital Remote Sensing image and DEM can integrate the advantages of both in identifying ancient oasis and improve the interpreting accuracy greatly.

Date Published: 3 November 2008
PDF: 10 pages
Proc. SPIE 7145, Geoinformatics 2008 and Joint Conference on GIS and Built Environment: Monitoring and Assessment of Natural Resources and Environments, 714522 (3 November 2008); doi: 10.1117/12.813056

Published in SPIE Proceedings Vol. 7145:
Geoinformatics 2008 and Joint Conference on GIS and Built Environment: Monitoring and Assessment of Natural Resources and Environments
Lin Liu; Xia Li; Kai Liu; Xinchang Zhang; Yong Lao, Editor(s)