近年来,随着空间遥感技术的迅速发展,利用卫星或航天飞行器从空中来观察自然界的种种活动和卫星从空间取得的资料在许多领域中得到广泛应用。这是因为,卫星和航天飞行器在几百、甚至上万公里的高空飞行,不受严寒的高山、干旱的沙漠、波涛汹涌的海洋,以及人烟稀少,难于通行的地面条件的限制。

In order to grasp their dynamics, it is necessary to have some means to monitor their changes between short intervals. Remote sensing technique is an ideal one among these means- This article is an attempt to study the dynamics of some river deltas and lakes by means of Landsat-MSS imagery in combination with field observation and analysis of historical records.The Huang He Delta is fast prograding through the aggradation, shifting and lengthening of its numerous distributaries. It may be considered as the overlapping and coalescing of tens of small individual deltas which can be clearly delineated from the Landsat-MSS imagery. The development of the Chang Jiang Delta is somewhat different. Its channel mouth bar is the focus of the delta growth. The channel mouth bar first becomes an island and then gradually combines with the mainland as one of the passages around it, gradually silting up. So the river mouth island may be considered as a subdelta which will eventually be annexed to the main delta. It can be seen from the Landsat-MSS imagery that the annexation of the Chongming island to the main delta is impending as the passage north of it is silted up while the Changxing island at the mouth of the southern passage is becoming the site of a new subdelta. According to the Landsat-MSS imagery, the Luan He Delta has a strong tectonic control in its development.Along the middle and lower courses of the Chang Jiang River, there are several large lakes which are the resulting from the combined actions of exogenic and endo-genic forces. Among them the Poyang Lake and Dongting Lake are the largest two. The Poyang Lake is inundated by the Chang Jiang River during flood and is largely exposed at low water stage to be crossed by the extended Gan Jiang channel. The Dongting Lake is connected to the Chang Jiang River by four over flow channels which bring large amount of silt to the northern side of the lake. So the lake shrinksin area. The desert lake------Lop Nur has so far been famous as a wandering lake,but in fact it is not wandering. All evidences recealed on the Landsat-MSS imagery and collected in the field indicate that this lake is much affected by climatic fluctuations and neotectonic movements. It gradually shrinks and moves to the west but has never left its downfaulted basin.Landsat-MSS imagery will much promote our researches in various fields of geography and help to realize the ’quantification of geographical phenomena.