IDENTIFICATION OF GEOLOGICAL HAZARDS WITH REMOTE SENSING IN THE MOTUO, TIBET

Motuo County of Tibet is the only county without a highway in China. Motuo is located on the sewing-belt between the Indian Ocean block and the Europe-Asia block. It is the museum of geological hazards. Because of the constraint of the Himalayas, limited accessibility and the difficulty weather conditions, it is not practical to adopt the conventional ways in reconnaissance of the geological hazards along the potential route for the highway to be constructed. Hence the Landsat ETM+, Ikonos-2 and aero-photograph were adopted to fill up the gap of geological information in this area. The geological hazards and their distributions in the area were then characterized using multi-level geological remote sensing analysis, which provided guidelines in the identification of hazardous geological masses along the highway route. It proved to be a good method for the selection of the best route scheme of the Motuo road.