Due to urbanization increasing

the quantity of solid wastes in Beijing is increasing rapidly and leads to large numbers of informal solid wastes dumps. Solid wastes in these sites are usually dumped in the open air without certain environmental conservation measures

which influence the urban environment and human healthy badly. It is absolutely necessary to monitor these dumps in order to take some effective measurements to dispose them. Remote sensing technology can provide a rapid and effective way to identify and monitor the dumps

owning to its characteristics of objectivity

real-time and macro-scope view. With high spatial resolution

high frequency of revisiting and broad coverage range

Beijing-1 Microsatellite image is an important data source for urban environment monitoring. Taking the flat plain area of Beijing as study site

this paper establishes the interpretation keys of informal open-air solid waste dumps through studying their characteristics based on Beijing-1 fusion images. Via visual interpretation and automatic change detection methods

the authors studies the location and change of the open-air solid waste dumps. Compared with the field investigation data

it shows high accuracy （about 90.3%） of the indoor visual interpretation result using Beijing-1 images. However

on account of the uncertainty of the solid waste dumps characteristics

automatic change detection method can just be utilized to decrease the work of visual interpretation to find the location instead of replacing it completely.