In May 1987

a serious forest fire happened in Daxinanlin Mountains of China. Through theoretical analysis and practical investigation

it was discovered that the IR rediation of fores-tfire was just within the detecting range of TM band 7 and reached its saturated brightness with strong contrast to surroundings not on burning. This is excellent for flame detection. Furthermore

three visible bands of TM are sensitive to smoke and can be helpful to estimate wind velocity

direction and fire spreading trends. A color composite image of TM 7

4

3 designated as R

G

B is of the richest information

in which burning zones appear to be bright red

fire-stricken ground dark brown

fire-free fores: green

water body dark blue and smoke light blue floating from the burning area. Rocks

rivers

lakes

farmlands and residential areas can be easily distinguished. Such composite can be most conveniently used to located the accurate position concerned

to analyze fire spreading tread.The pine caterpillar has spreaded widely and rapidly in recent years. An experiment strudy on monitoring caterpillar damage based on TM data was carried out. Through numerical analysis of TM data

a set of TM image processing technique developed accordingly to eliminate the interference and highlight the insec damage information. Finally

calculating and classifying the normalized perpendicular vegetation index ptovided an effective measure to divide insect damage into three levels. It shows that using TM image to monitor forest insect damage is highly reliable and can meet the requirement of practical utilization in caterpillar prevention and control.In summer of 1991

the region of Yangtze and Huaihe river suffered a catastrophic flood disaster. TM images provide rich information of flood scope

surface moisture and vegetation growing

on which crop harvest depends. Through numerical analysis and applied processing of TM image acquired on July

14

five days after flood peak

the components humidity （H）

vegetation （V） and other new indices degrees were obtained. After a new supervised classification a map with heavy

moderate

light degrees of disaster

undamaged region and residential spots was achieved as well as each class area. Checking in the field indicated that the results were accurate.