A research team led by Prof. LIU Liangyun from the Aerospace Information Research Institute with the Chinese Academy of Sciences (AIRCAS) has produced the first comprehensive, high-resolution map of global city and town boundaries, providing an unprecedented view of how urban boundaries have expanded and transformed over the past two decades. The new dataset—derived from 30-meter-resolution observations—fills a long-standing gap in global urban studies and provides planners and scientists with a powerful tool for examining sustainable development challenges.

Published in Chinese Geographical Science​, the research is led by Prof. WU Bingfang from the Aerospace Information Research Institute, Chinese Academy of Sciences (AIRCAS). By integrating 1-km evapotranspiration data, CHIRPS rainfall records and GRACE satellite gravimetry, the team quantified how irrigation expansion and planned hydropower schemes interact with environmental flow needs across the 1.39 million km² basin between 2003 and 2019.

A new study led by Professor LU Shanlong from the Aerospace Information Research Institute, Chinese Academy of Sciences (AIRCAS), has published in Communications Earth & Environment, reveals that since 2019, when the previously isolated Zonag-Yanhu drainage basin became connected to the headwaters of the Yangtze River, both hydrological and ecological processes within the basin have undergone rapid transformation.

A research team led by Prof. NIE Sheng at the Aerospace Information Research Institute, Chinese Academy of Sciences (AIRCAS), has developed a new bathymetric mapping framework that integrates indirect inversion of ICESat-2 satellite LiDAR data with multi-source remote sensing observations. The framework, detailed in Remote Sensing of Environment combines wave-based indirect bathymetry, multi-source feature fusion, and a temporal sample-transfer strategy to achieve high-accuracy, wide-coverage mapping in optically complex shallow waters.

A research team from the Aerospace Information Research Institute of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (AIRCAS), in collaboration with the Center for Advanced Studies in Earth Sciences and Biodiversity (CADIC-CONICET), Argentina, has revealed major blind spots in current Antarctic vegetation mapping caused by the poor detectability of dark-colored lichens.

A recent study published in Microsystem & Nanoengineering​ introduces an innovative solution to the persisting challenges in Micro-Electro-Mechanical Systems (MEMS) resonant accelerometers: temperature drift and measurement dead zones. By adopting a dual-mode operating scheme that effectively separates the operating frequencies of the differential beams, the researchers achieved notable improvements in the sensor's accuracy and overall performances.