China's wetlands restoration around Poyang Lake, middle Yangtze: evidences from landsat TM/ETM images

There are hundreds of lakes in central China. Because of the dense population and low yield, lots of floodplain was reclaimed as farmland in recent hundreds of years. But after experiencing the tremendous flood disaster in the middle reaches of Yangzte River in 1998, wetlands restoration policy was soon proposed by the central government and implemented by the provinces in middle Yangtze. Poyang Lake is the largest freshwater lake in China. It lies in Jiangxi Province and is one of the key areas of wetlands restoration in middle Yangzte. Landsat TM/ETM images from 1998 to 2004 were used to monitor the area of wetlands restoration and assess its achievements around Poyang Lake in this paper. The result of wetlands restoration can be divided into tivo types: complete restoration and semirestoration. The former type is returning farmland to lake completely, while the latter is Just let farmers move away from the floodplain, the farmland was returned into lake only in flood season and can also be reaped in non-flood seasons. It Is testified that only 20 percents of the whole restoration area were the complete restoration, and about 80 percents of the wetlands restoration were semi-restoration around Poyang Lake.